Ope Olugasa is the Managing Director of Grace Infotech
Limited (GIL), an Information Technology firm and publishers of
Lawpavilion a leadng legal IT research tools provider. He spoke
with reporters as part of activities marking the firm’s 10th
anniversary. Legal Editor John Austin Unachukwu was
there.
HOW would you appraise the last 10 years of firm’s
performance?
Looking back, our achievements are so numerous, however, I will
highlight a few. From available statistics, the average Nigerian
business usually fails within the first five years, so we are
pleased that we are not part of that statistic. Celebrating our
10th year in business is definitely a significant milestone. In
terms of our achievement in the legal services industry in Nigeria,
oh! it has been quite an adventure. I can never forget our first
outing at the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) 2007 Conference in
Ilorin Kwara State where lawyers came to our exhibition stand and
laughed at us
Why did they laugh at you?
They told us that no Nigerian court would permit a counsel to
cite electronic law reports in open court or in written
submissions. In fact, a particular judge was mentioned as not being
receptive to such “disruptive practices”. But our testimony is that
this particular Judge is one of our subscribers today, with
electronic law reports being a permanent fixture on the landscape
of legal practice in Nigeria.
How did you achieve this?
For several years we have traversed the length and breadth of
Nigeria, preaching the “gospel “ of technology adoption in legal
practice. So, we feel immense satisfaction to see the wide
acceptability from the industry now. More recently, we have been
focusing on using technology to solve local problems, especially
within the legal services industry. For example, a couple of years
ago, we got the opportunity to work with the leadership of the NBA
to re-introduce online registration for the biggest gathering of
lawyers in the world, that is the Annual General Conference of the
NBA. Using software developers trained in Nigerian universities and
polytechnics, we were able to design, develop and deploy a
registration portal which contained the list of all legal
practitioners called to Bar in Nigeria and particularly those who
have been verified. Deploying that solution has helped the
leadership and administration of the NBA to better plan and prepare
for this annual gathering. Furthermore, deploying technology as we
did checkmated the incidents of a handful of legal practitioners
not paying the correct fees for the Conference as was obtainable
before our involvement.
What is the impact of LawPavilion products on the Legal
Services Industry in Nigeria?
We believe our biggest impact for our subscribers has been to
afford them the confidence to do what they do best. Time and time
again, we hear and receive testimonials from our subscribers about
how much ease using LawPavilion has brought into their practice. We
have several good reports about the speed with which Judges now
deliver rulings because with the tap of a button, authorities are
called up though our search engine which in turn aids the speed of
dispensing justice. Furthermore, our boldness in being Headline
Sponsor for international conferences such as the IBA Investing in
Africa Conference and regularly showcasing our products at
international exhibitions has cemented the confidence our
subscribers place in our products. For the general public, we
believe our impact will be felt even more through our
public-education tools, one of which is the “Know My Rights” app
that I mentioned earlier. As we continue to use technology to solve
local problems, we have no doubt that our country will move several
positions forward on global indexes such as the World Bank
sponsored Doing Business Index and the World Justice Index.
In the judiciary in particular, what has been the impact
of adopting LawPavilion?
We take a special sense of pride that even the judiciary is now
at the fore front of the drive for using technology in the
adjudication process in our courts. Nowadays, it is commonplace to
hear “electronic filing and service”, “electronic case management”.
We have truly moved forward from campaigning for adoption of
technology, now we are using technology to solve salient and
lingering problems. We feel so blessed and grateful indeed for what
we have been able to accomplish in the industry. Today, you will
find subscribers to LawPavilion electronic legal research software
in the Judiciary, in big and small Law Firms, in Faculties of Law,
among law school students, and more recently in neighbouring
countries and outside the shores of our great country. Indeed, we
can say we have started exporting technology. It is now acceptable
to see the citation of “LPELR” in judgments from the highest courts
in our country to the pages of treatise by erudite scholars and
authors. It certainly has been a very rewarding and gratifying
journey for us as a corporate organisation operating in this
space.
So, what is your anniversary gift your
subscribers?
As part of our celebrations, we will be making our latest
product, a legal analytics software which we have named
“LawPavilion Prime” commercially available for our teeming
subscribers. We unveiled the prototype of LawPavilion Prime
containing only about 5,000 Supreme Court Judgments sometime last
year along with our Judicial Appreciation Awards Ceremony, the
Words in Gold Awards where we recognised and celebrated Justices of
the Supreme Court of Nigeria through a compilation of their
pronouncements through the years. We went as far back as the very
first set of Justices who sat in the hallowed Chambers of the
Supreme Court and we enjoyed the rare privilege of having the
Keynote Address delivered by the Acting President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN)
What is so special about the new edition?
After this, we felt our subscribers deserved the very best at
all times, so we went back to the drawing board to ensure that we
included Court of Appeal judgments into LawPavilion Prime to give
it the edge over mere electronic law reports. We are pleased to
announce that work is now complete on the software for PC and
Android versions with iOS following very quickly and we are poised
to deploy this solution commercially at the 2017 NBA Conference.
Through our patented technology for analytics, we are set to
provide Legal Practitioners with over 13,000 reported cases with
analytical ratings to ensure that at all times, a LawPavilion
subscriber is relying on the best and highest ranked authority on a
principle of Law.
Why did you say LawPavilion Prime remains the most
sophisticated product on legal analytics in Nigeria or even African
legal services market today.
With the introduction of Legal Analytics, what we are providing
for legal practitioners is not just a compilation of reported
cases. We have further to highlight locus classicus on any issue of
law inputed into the search engine. Also based on the search
results, the LawPavilion Prime using a unique algorithm calculates
the precedential value of each case and then collates all relevant
cases on that issue or principle of Law as pronounced by the courts
especially at the appellate levels. In fact, LawPavilion Prime is
best experienced as mere words do not do sufficient justice to the
ingenuity that has gone into creating this new product. It is truly
an excellent example of showcasing the growth and development of
Nigerian jurisprudence and we are very proud to have raised the bar
again in electronic law reporting by introducing analytics into law
reports. We really look forward to showcasing the unique product to
our subscribers at the NBA Conference 2017 as they join us to
felicitate our 10th year anniversary and we are positive that as
they begin to use this product as we head into a new legal year,
their legal practices would improve significantly and become even
more profitable.
How do you feel getting involved in NBA
programmes?
We derived a great sense of pleasure of making that enormous
contribution to NBA Conferences since 2014. It is important to
state that the registration portal and overseeing the registration
process including printing the name tags were our small
contributions as part of our sponsorship towards the NBA
Conferences, we never billed or charged a penny for it.
Any discounted rate for lawyers at the AGC?
Yes, we also have amazing discounts and loads of freebies for
our teeming subscribers at the NBA Conference holding at the
Landmark Event Centre, Oniru, Lagos. We look forward especially to
welcoming our subscribers who live and practice outside Lagos State
to the Centre of Excellence. It is going to be a beautiful
celebration with lots and lots of gifts and prizes. On the other
hand, we will also be celebrating with Nigerians as we have
developed a new Android App called “Know My Rights”. As a company
that invests heavily in research and development, we observed that
people are reluctant to consult legal practitioners due to a myriad
of factors such as ignorance, perception that legal services are
expensive and time-consuming amongst others. But we know that the
services of lawyers are indispensable for us to have a sane society
where the rule of Law prevails.
What is unique about “ Know My Rights”
product?
Based on our research, we realised that while English is the
official language, there is a language that transcends all tribal
divides of our country and that language is “PIDGIN”. So through
the “Know My Rights” app, we have brought together the best of
culture through language and technology. Working with renowned
language scholars, we are pleased to present our “Know My Rights”
App which contains the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria (as amended), easy to understand presentation of Child’s
Right Act, the Domestic Violence Law of Lagos State, Legal Issues
on Interaction with the Police, the Vehicle Inspection Officers
(VIO) and Federal Road Safety Corps Acts and several others. We
have included the English and Pidgin language versions of these
salient Laws in the app so that anyone can read them, understand
them and be properly guided. We have even translated the Nigerian
Constitution into Pidgin Language. As more people become aware of
the position of the Law, the agitations against the Judiciary and
Legal Practitioners would be put in proper perspective by the
public. We also firmly believe that access to and usage of this app
would serve as a marketing tool for Lawyers because the need for
lawyers would be very clear and conspicuous.
Our continued survival is predicated on our clients and
subscribers’ businesses, so we will explore opportunities to use
technology to move our subscribers’ businesses forward. The app is
already available for download free of charge on the Google Play
Store and we will encourage many Nigerians to take advantage of its
availability. As time progresses, we will add other relevant and
far-reaching Laws to the App. We look forward to the App becoming a
learning tool in our primary and secondary schools so that the
Nigerian child or citizen is aware of his rights and
responsibilities which are a sine qua non for growth and
development of our great nation
You have partnered the NBA to enhance service delivery
to Nigerian lawyers for some time now. How do you feel about your
partnership with the NBA
First, we would like to seize this medium to express our immense
gratitude to the leadership of the NBA and the TCCP for considering
us worthy partners to the association of the noblest profession. To
us, it is a testament to all we have been able to accomplish these
past years. Over the years, we have enjoyed the opportunity to act
as ICT Partner to the NBA-AGC and indeed it has been a worthwhile
partnership for us, having the stamp of approval from the industry
that we serve
It is widely believed among lawyers that you did not
deliver at previous NBA conferences because you failed to make
conference materials available to conferees what actually
happened?
Yes, a number of participants had erroneously thought we failed
to make conference materials available. I think its important to
clarify at this juncture that we were never in charge of production
of conference materials, NBA handled it themselves. We always seek
for ways to add value to the legal services industry in Nigeria and
we do not intend to relent anytime soon, in spite of previous
mistakes and challenges. We are a value-oriented and value-driven
company and it has been working for us from inception till date.
Based on the success recorded with online registration for the
NBA-AGC, we feel a sense of elation that the industry has now also
recognized electronic voting, which was the means of voting used
for last year’s election into the National Executive Officers of
the NBA and which we were opportuned to have worked in conjunction
with the leadership of the NBA to provide the portal and voting
mechanisms in 2016.
What is your package for conferees at the 2017 Annual
General Conference of the NBA holding in Lagos?
Due to the fact that we enjoyed such excellent rapport with the
NBA, there were discussions for us to collaborate with the NBA-AGC
through the TCCP for the 2017 Conference. However, we couldn’t
afford to meet the request made of us, which was to avail
Conference attendees of our flagship product free of charge for one
year. Based on our financial projections for the year and beyond,
acceding to that request would have signalled the death knell for
our business because we invest heavily in research and development.
Bearing in mind such costs incurred and to be incurred on research
and development, we were unwilling to sacrifice quality on the
altar of making a quick buck or scoring cheap points.As a company,
our passion and dedication to the Nigerian legal community and the
NBA is unflinching, and there is no going back in serving Nigerian
Lawyers with integrity and excellence. Hence we were left with no
option than to seek other avenues of partnership with the NBA for
the 2017 AGC. So while our products are not being given for free at
the Conference, we have various huge discounts and other freebies
to give our teeming, loyal subscribers and those who visit our
exhibition stand at the Conference.
Ope Olugasa is the Managing Director of Grace Infotech
Limited (GIL), an Information Technology firm and publishers of
Lawpavilion a leadng legal IT research tools provider. He spoke
with reporters as part of activities marking the firm’s 10th
anniversary. Legal Editor John Austin Unachukwu was
there.
HOW would you appraise the last 10 years of firm’s
performance?
Looking back, our achievements are so numerous, however, I will
highlight a few. From available statistics, the average Nigerian
business usually fails within the first five years, so we are
pleased that we are not part of that statistic. Celebrating our
10th year in business is definitely a significant milestone. In
terms of our achievement in the legal services industry in Nigeria,
oh! it has been quite an adventure. I can never forget our first
outing at the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) 2007 Conference in
Ilorin Kwara State where lawyers came to our exhibition stand and
laughed at us
Why did they laugh at you?
They told us that no Nigerian court would permit a counsel to
cite electronic law reports in open court or in written
submissions. In fact, a particular judge was mentioned as not being
receptive to such “disruptive practices”. But our testimony is that
this particular Judge is one of our subscribers today, with
electronic law reports being a permanent fixture on the landscape
of legal practice in Nigeria.
How did you achieve this?
For several years we have traversed the length and breadth of
Nigeria, preaching the “gospel “ of technology adoption in legal
practice. So, we feel immense satisfaction to see the wide
acceptability from the industry now. More recently, we have been
focusing on using technology to solve local problems, especially
within the legal services industry. For example, a couple of years
ago, we got the opportunity to work with the leadership of the NBA
to re-introduce online registration for the biggest gathering of
lawyers in the world, that is the Annual General Conference of the
NBA. Using software developers trained in Nigerian universities and
polytechnics, we were able to design, develop and deploy a
registration portal which contained the list of all legal
practitioners called to Bar in Nigeria and particularly those who
have been verified. Deploying that solution has helped the
leadership and administration of the NBA to better plan and prepare
for this annual gathering. Furthermore, deploying technology as we
did checkmated the incidents of a handful of legal practitioners
not paying the correct fees for the Conference as was obtainable
before our involvement.
What is the impact of LawPavilion products on the Legal
Services Industry in Nigeria?
We believe our biggest impact for our subscribers has been to
afford them the confidence to do what they do best. Time and time
again, we hear and receive testimonials from our subscribers about
how much ease using LawPavilion has brought into their practice. We
have several good reports about the speed with which Judges now
deliver rulings because with the tap of a button, authorities are
called up though our search engine which in turn aids the speed of
dispensing justice. Furthermore, our boldness in being Headline
Sponsor for international conferences such as the IBA Investing in
Africa Conference and regularly showcasing our products at
international exhibitions has cemented the confidence our
subscribers place in our products. For the general public, we
believe our impact will be felt even more through our
public-education tools, one of which is the “Know My Rights” app
that I mentioned earlier. As we continue to use technology to solve
local problems, we have no doubt that our country will move several
positions forward on global indexes such as the World Bank
sponsored Doing Business Index and the World Justice Index.
In the judiciary in particular, what has been the impact
of adopting LawPavilion?
We take a special sense of pride that even the judiciary is now
at the fore front of the drive for using technology in the
adjudication process in our courts. Nowadays, it is commonplace to
hear “electronic filing and service”, “electronic case management”.
We have truly moved forward from campaigning for adoption of
technology, now we are using technology to solve salient and
lingering problems. We feel so blessed and grateful indeed for what
we have been able to accomplish in the industry. Today, you will
find subscribers to LawPavilion electronic legal research software
in the Judiciary, in big and small Law Firms, in Faculties of Law,
among law school students, and more recently in neighbouring
countries and outside the shores of our great country. Indeed, we
can say we have started exporting technology. It is now acceptable
to see the citation of “LPELR” in judgments from the highest courts
in our country to the pages of treatise by erudite scholars and
authors. It certainly has been a very rewarding and gratifying
journey for us as a corporate organisation operating in this
space.
So, what is your anniversary gift your
subscribers?
As part of our celebrations, we will be making our latest
product, a legal analytics software which we have named
“LawPavilion Prime” commercially available for our teeming
subscribers. We unveiled the prototype of LawPavilion Prime
containing only about 5,000 Supreme Court Judgments sometime last
year along with our Judicial Appreciation Awards Ceremony, the
Words in Gold Awards where we recognised and celebrated Justices of
the Supreme Court of Nigeria through a compilation of their
pronouncements through the years. We went as far back as the very
first set of Justices who sat in the hallowed Chambers of the
Supreme Court and we enjoyed the rare privilege of having the
Keynote Address delivered by the Acting President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN)
What is so special about the new edition?
After this, we felt our subscribers deserved the very best at
all times, so we went back to the drawing board to ensure that we
included Court of Appeal judgments into LawPavilion Prime to give
it the edge over mere electronic law reports. We are pleased to
announce that work is now complete on the software for PC and
Android versions with iOS following very quickly and we are poised
to deploy this solution commercially at the 2017 NBA Conference.
Through our patented technology for analytics, we are set to
provide Legal Practitioners with over 13,000 reported cases with
analytical ratings to ensure that at all times, a LawPavilion
subscriber is relying on the best and highest ranked authority on a
principle of Law.
Why did you say LawPavilion Prime remains the most
sophisticated product on legal analytics in Nigeria or even African
legal services market today.
With the introduction of Legal Analytics, what we are providing
for legal practitioners is not just a compilation of reported
cases. We have further to highlight locus classicus on any issue of
law inputed into the search engine. Also based on the search
results, the LawPavilion Prime using a unique algorithm calculates
the precedential value of each case and then collates all relevant
cases on that issue or principle of Law as pronounced by the courts
especially at the appellate levels. In fact, LawPavilion Prime is
best experienced as mere words do not do sufficient justice to the
ingenuity that has gone into creating this new product. It is truly
an excellent example of showcasing the growth and development of
Nigerian jurisprudence and we are very proud to have raised the bar
again in electronic law reporting by introducing analytics into law
reports. We really look forward to showcasing the unique product to
our subscribers at the NBA Conference 2017 as they join us to
felicitate our 10th year anniversary and we are positive that as
they begin to use this product as we head into a new legal year,
their legal practices would improve significantly and become even
more profitable.
How do you feel getting involved in NBA
programmes?
We derived a great sense of pleasure of making that enormous
contribution to NBA Conferences since 2014. It is important to
state that the registration portal and overseeing the registration
process including printing the name tags were our small
contributions as part of our sponsorship towards the NBA
Conferences, we never billed or charged a penny for it.
Any discounted rate for lawyers at the AGC?
Yes, we also have amazing discounts and loads of freebies for
our teeming subscribers at the NBA Conference holding at the
Landmark Event Centre, Oniru, Lagos. We look forward especially to
welcoming our subscribers who live and practice outside Lagos State
to the Centre of Excellence. It is going to be a beautiful
celebration with lots and lots of gifts and prizes. On the other
hand, we will also be celebrating with Nigerians as we have
developed a new Android App called “Know My Rights”. As a company
that invests heavily in research and development, we observed that
people are reluctant to consult legal practitioners due to a myriad
of factors such as ignorance, perception that legal services are
expensive and time-consuming amongst others. But we know that the
services of lawyers are indispensable for us to have a sane society
where the rule of Law prevails.
What is unique about “ Know My Rights”
product?
Based on our research, we realised that while English is the
official language, there is a language that transcends all tribal
divides of our country and that language is “PIDGIN”. So through
the “Know My Rights” app, we have brought together the best of
culture through language and technology. Working with renowned
language scholars, we are pleased to present our “Know My Rights”
App which contains the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria (as amended), easy to understand presentation of Child’s
Right Act, the Domestic Violence Law of Lagos State, Legal Issues
on Interaction with the Police, the Vehicle Inspection Officers
(VIO) and Federal Road Safety Corps Acts and several others. We
have included the English and Pidgin language versions of these
salient Laws in the app so that anyone can read them, understand
them and be properly guided. We have even translated the Nigerian
Constitution into Pidgin Language. As more people become aware of
the position of the Law, the agitations against the Judiciary and
Legal Practitioners would be put in proper perspective by the
public. We also firmly believe that access to and usage of this app
would serve as a marketing tool for Lawyers because the need for
lawyers would be very clear and conspicuous.
Our continued survival is predicated on our clients and
subscribers’ businesses, so we will explore opportunities to use
technology to move our subscribers’ businesses forward. The app is
already available for download free of charge on the Google Play
Store and we will encourage many Nigerians to take advantage of its
availability. As time progresses, we will add other relevant and
far-reaching Laws to the App. We look forward to the App becoming a
learning tool in our primary and secondary schools so that the
Nigerian child or citizen is aware of his rights and
responsibilities which are a sine qua non for growth and
development of our great nation
You have partnered the NBA to enhance service delivery
to Nigerian lawyers for some time now. How do you feel about your
partnership with the NBA
First, we would like to seize this medium to express our immense
gratitude to the leadership of the NBA and the TCCP for considering
us worthy partners to the association of the noblest profession. To
us, it is a testament to all we have been able to accomplish these
past years. Over the years, we have enjoyed the opportunity to act
as ICT Partner to the NBA-AGC and indeed it has been a worthwhile
partnership for us, having the stamp of approval from the industry
that we serve
It is widely believed among lawyers that you did not
deliver at previous NBA conferences because you failed to make
conference materials available to conferees what actually
happened?
Yes, a number of participants had erroneously thought we failed
to make conference materials available. I think its important to
clarify at this juncture that we were never in charge of production
of conference materials, NBA handled it themselves. We always seek
for ways to add value to the legal services industry in Nigeria and
we do not intend to relent anytime soon, in spite of previous
mistakes and challenges. We are a value-oriented and value-driven
company and it has been working for us from inception till date.
Based on the success recorded with online registration for the
NBA-AGC, we feel a sense of elation that the industry has now also
recognized electronic voting, which was the means of voting used
for last year’s election into the National Executive Officers of
the NBA and which we were opportuned to have worked in conjunction
with the leadership of the NBA to provide the portal and voting
mechanisms in 2016.
What is your package for conferees at the 2017 Annual
General Conference of the NBA holding in Lagos?
Due to the fact that we enjoyed such excellent rapport with the
NBA, there were discussions for us to collaborate with the NBA-AGC
through the TCCP for the 2017 Conference. However, we couldn’t
afford to meet the request made of us, which was to avail
Conference attendees of our flagship product free of charge for one
year. Based on our financial projections for the year and beyond,
acceding to that request would have signalled the death knell for
our business because we invest heavily in research and development.
Bearing in mind such costs incurred and to be incurred on research
and development, we were unwilling to sacrifice quality on the
altar of making a quick buck or scoring cheap points.As a company,
our passion and dedication to the Nigerian legal community and the
NBA is unflinching, and there is no going back in serving Nigerian
Lawyers with integrity and excellence. Hence we were left with no
option than to seek other avenues of partnership with the NBA for
the 2017 AGC. So while our products are not being given for free at
the Conference, we have various huge discounts and other freebies
to give our teeming, loyal subscribers and those who visit our
exhibition stand at the Conference.