Delta State Chief Judge, Justice Tessy Diai, yesterday, decried “stone age” methods still adopted by legal practitioners in the state.

Diai made this known at the weekend during the 2021 Law Week/10th Anniversary of the Oleh branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Isoko South local council of the state.

Represented by the Administrative Judge covering Oleh and Ozoro Judicial Divisions, Justice Cletus Emifoniye, she said: “We cannot continue to do things as it was in the stone age.”

Diai therefore urged speakers, discussants and participants to prepare their minds to deliberate on and exchange ideas in order to develop a workable template on how to move the legal profession to the next level.

She said there was room for improvement because of the calibre of legal practitioners and discussants that were gathered.

State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Isaiah Bozimo, spoke on the theme of the Law Week, ‘Developing Lawyering Skills for Modern Practice’.

Represented by an Assistant Director in the Ministry of Justice, Mrs. Ejovwoke Oghorodje, Bozimo said the ministry has put machinery in place to amend the state’s Administration of Criminal Justice Law (ACJL) 2017 to make the criminal justice sector move faster.On the period prescribed by the ACJL for legal advice, he said it is possible for the attorney general to render legal advice in two weeks from when the duplicate case file of the defendant gets to his office.

He implored members of the Bar to mount pressure on registrars of the magistrate court to forward case files of their clients on time to the attorney general’s office in Asaba for immediate treatment.

Delivering the keynote address, Prof. Oghenemaro Festus Emiri (SAN) said lawyers are problem solvers and should have the skills of developing legal reasoning and communication skills.

He said artificial intelligence is shrinking the legal market, warning that legal practitioners who fail to move with the new trend would have themselves to blame.

The chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Oleh branch, Mr. A. T. Aniko, and chairman of the Law Week Planning Committee, Mrs. Ethel Ighaire, in their separate speeches justified the theme of the programme, saying it was an opportunity for legal practitioners to learn new skills and equip themselves with modern techniques.