• Fee is appropriate, says Daudu SAN • Lawyers propose special consideration for lawyers in Civil Service • SANs kick against proposal, say rank of SAN is expensive in nature

Debates about the propriety or otherwise of the new application fee for the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria as stipulated by the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee in its 2023 Application Guidelines has continued to linger among legal practitioners in the country.

Aside take exception to the 100% increase from N500,000 to N1,000,000, some lawyers have particularly queried the reasonableness of the fixed fee given the disparity in earnings between lawyers and how the fee for exclude eminently qualified lawyers from attaining the coveted rank.

A lawyer, Lawrence Udo Edet via Facebook post wondered how a lawyer in the civil service who might earn less than a million Naira per annum would be able to cough out that sum for the rank of SAN.

He called for a different (lower) amount lf money to be prescribed particularly for public service lawyers.

He wrote: “Okon is a lawyer in the civil service. His annual income is not up to N1million. Okon has qualifications for the award of SANship.

Will Okon be able to pay N1million to LPPC to apply for SANship?

Please will it be offensive for lawyers in civil service to pay a different amount of money, something lower, as application fee for SANship?

However, responding to such criticism of the new application fee, a Former NBA President, J.B. Daudu SAN described the new fee as appropriate.

According to him, “Taking the rank of SAN is not a tea party. It is expensive. You need to go round all the courts you have practised collecting certified copies of judgements that you have appeared in.

You need to have a state of the art law office, you need to employ an IT consultant to upload all your requirements on the SAN portal, you will travel around 3 times to Abuja for interviews and submission of forms, you will have to do a number of pro bono cases at your own expense and you will approach opposing advocates any judges for references.

Those invisible expenses cannot be less than N25million at the very least. Then if you are selected you will cough out not less than N10million for the robes and other thanksgiving ceremonies.

In England to be a KC, you will spend 65k pounds sterling in the process and you are usually advised to seek the services of a coach which costs nothing less than 5k sterling. ”

Responding to J.B. Daudu’s claim, Human Rights Activist, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu described his comments as false. He described the process for SANship application as flawed and corrupted saying a lot of persons who did not meet the criteria have now been given the rank.

His position was supported by Abuja-based Lawyer and Rights Activist, Maxwell Opara who said: “… I can comfortably tell whoever cares to hear that some drivers of the JSC know the simple corrupt means of collecting Silk if you can pay. And nobody cares if you are qualified or not.

The Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) on the 4th of January via a notice signed by the Secretary of the LPPC and Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, Hajo Sarki Bello, Esq. called for applications for the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria for 2023 and one the directives listed for submission of applications states: “An applicant must pay a non-refundable processing fee of One Million Naira (N1,000. 000.00) only to any of the following accounts held in the name of the “Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (SAN)”

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