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| Lotus Menezes and Thomas Nguluma |
What makes London lawyers ahead of the game in the legal world? What supposedly puts them head and shoulders and then head and shoulders after that above us Tanzanian legal minds? TRAINING! The value of the International Lawyers for Africa program currently running from September to November 2011 is training. In the first two weeks we have been bouncing around the city from law firm to law firm, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, SJ Berwin, Hogan Lovells and Trinity International LLP, gaining training after training, our brains at fried at this point but we now see the reason why London lawyers are so good, they have access to resources.
In the Tanzanian practice often we find ourselves becoming generalists, which is not a bad thing, we learn on the spot, a deal or transaction comes in the door and we have to learn from scratch. It is what makes us good lawyers, and given training we can make a strong argument for being even better than many competing jurisdictions. However, we need to focus our direction towards training. Many of these law firms are looking towards Africa including Tanzania for new work, and local lawyers often find themselves only participating in a deal in a small way, answering only local law points, so these major law firms real in the work and then horn in our expertise to complete major transactions, which could have been run fully by a local law firm. The missing link for us is the training and as a result the confidence from clients that we are capable to seal the deal.
The Tanganyika Law Society has made tremendous efforts to build on our knowledge in the legal field through the Council for Legal Education, but law firms need to focus on training as well, from the moment a fresh law graduate enters a law firm, they need to be exposed to both practical and theoretical training. Major law firms in the UK have departments that specialize in training the lawyers in the firm and these can include lawyers who have decided practice is not for them, or are more inclined towards the training side of things. We have many lawyers out of jobs, and training can both enhance our legal minds whilst creating jobs in the legal sphere from a different angle.
International Lawyers for Africa Participants
www.ilfa.org.uk
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