Communication expert canvasses justice sector reforms to enhance quality legal advocacy

A communication and public policy consultant, Austin Tam-George, has called for reform of the justice sector to restore integrity in the administration of justice and elevate the quality of legal advocacy.

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Mr Tam-George, the executive director of the Institute of Communication and Corporate Studies, Lagos, made the call at a virtual seminar for lawyers on Sunday, where he was the guest speaker.

Themed “Fundamentals of Strategic Influence in Legal Practice,” the seminar organised by the Institute of Continuing Legal Education had over 2,500 lawyers in attendance, including the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Afam Osigwe.

Mr Tam-George, a former senior executive fellow at Harvard University and a former commissioner for information in Rivers State, highlighted the importance of influence in advancing legal practice. He noted that influence is a multi-disciplinary subject, requiring a strategic approach to build and deploy effectively.

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“When you talk about influence, you are talking about how to change people’s behaviours, opinions towards a course you are advancing,” he said.

How to create, deploy influence across different disciplines

The guest speaker illustrates the multi-disciplinary nature of influence by citing the sports industry, particularly football. According to him, top clubs often offer lucrative contracts to premium players, effectively influencing their decisions to join their teams.

He said the industry, now known as the “influencer industry” in the age of social media, is worth billions of dollars and is vital to advancing a particular interest.

Job seekers, he said, try to convince recruiters to hire them, and in business, entrepreneurs try to persuade investors to invest in their startups. In legal practice, lawyers spend their careers trying to convince a judge to decide cases in favour of their clients.

Why influence is unique in legal practice

Mr Tam-George told the lawyers that deploying influence within a specific context of legal practice is unique from sales, economics, and other disciplines, and gave three reasons in support.

“Influence creation and deployment is different in legal practice for three reasons: it makes the difference between life and death; it makes the difference between liberty and incarceration, and finally, influence makes the difference between the reign of anarchy and the rule of law.

He said there are two ways for a lawyer to get the quality advocacy he desires to influence judges’ behaviour towards a particular case: clarity and coherence.

Mr Tam-George said the emphasis should be on whether the advocacy is understandable, whether written or oral. For it to be understandable, it must avoid grammatical and spelling errors, fanciful words, ambiguity, and undue repetitions.

He urged lawyers to stick to American spellings if they work within American jurisdiction and British spellings if they work with British legal jurisdiction, emphasising that the judge should not find it difficult to understand written briefs.

Mr Tam-George stressed that ambiguity occurs when an expression is capable of producing two or more meanings, particularly when deploying figurative expressions, and urged lawyers to avoid it. He advised lawyers to limit themselves to literal expressions to avoid ambiguities.

“Rather than saying Christiana has kicked the bucket, better say Christiana is dead. In this case, there is no chance for ambiguity,” he said.

He described proverbs as philosophical expressions that require an understanding of their cultural context to be effectively used. He noted that the diverse cultural landscape can lead to misunderstandings, especially when the audience and the lawyer do not share the same cultural background.

To eliminate ambiguity, Mr Tam-George advised lawyers to use words with literal, or surface meaning, so that the judge, clients, and those listening to the legal advocacy will understand.

For legal advocacy to be coherent, Mr Tam-George said it must be systematically presented so that the judge or adjudicator can understand it.

“If your idea is not coherent, the opposite will be chaotic advocacy,” he said.

Citing the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, Mr Tam-George said, every legal advocacy must have four main appeals: logical appeal (logos), emotional appeal (Pathos), ethical appeal (ethos), and agora (culture of open debate).

On how the four appeals can be used to create a climate of influence, whether in the context of mediation, negotiation, or court litigation, he said the logical appeal requires lawyers to consider if their advocacies make superior sense, and logically appealing to a judge, who may sometimes have an opinion in a matter. To overcome this, he recommended research, saying it enables lawyers to know relevant laws and authorities to support their advocacies.

In logical appeal, Mr Tam-George said, facts and evidence are important, not hearsay and speculations. According to him, conducting research and fact-finding visits to places of interest would help the lawyer make a compelling, logical presentation before a judge.

“According to Aristotle, we are not just logical people, we are also emotional people,” he said, adding that in legal practice, emotional appeal must closely align with logical appeal. According to him, making an emotional appeal in court does not mean you have to cry or stage a melodrama in court, but enables the audience to have a deeper connection with the message.

“In legal practice, one way to raise the emotional quotient is to stack up your evidence through a specific use of language,” he said. For instance, telling a judge that an innocent pregnant woman was killed in the presence of her children conveys an emotional impact because it is not only the woman who was killed, but the unborn baby as well.

To drive a compelling emotional impact, the young children who were present when their mother was killed should be present in court to testify about how their mother was killed, he advised and warned against using emotional appeal to manipulate the audience or the judge.

For ethical appeal (ethos), the guest speaker said, “It refers to the character and the credibility of the person who is seeking to persuade others.” According to him, ethical appeal can be enhanced by domain expertise and the ability to make good judgements. According to him, mastering a legal domain enhances the credibility of a lawyer.

Mr Tam-George said the fourth appeal, agora, refers to the ancient Greek marketplace of debate and exchange of ideas.

He listed the elements of agora to include, embracing the culture of open debate, capacity for civil dialogue, and respecting the view of opponents even when they disagree.

Speaking at the event, Edith Nwosu, a professor and board member at the Institute of Continuing Legal Education, thanked the guest speaker for the presentation, which she described as top-notch.

In her closing remarks, the Director of the Institute, Sera Ajijola, thanked lawyers for attending the seminar, noting that it was the first online seminar with the largest attendance of lawyers.