Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday says Nigerian lawyers risk losing their jobs to technology and called for a technology-driven legal system in Nigeria to enable it to remain relevant in the dynamic world.

Mr Osinbajo made the call while opening the 2021 Law Week of the Lagos Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

“According to a 2019 Report, 31,000 jobs in the American industry were lost due to automation, and by 2036 that number will grow to over a hundred thousand legal jobs,” said the vice president. “With a continued progression in technology, It is only a matter of time before the times also catch up with us in Nigeria.”

He stated that artificial intelligence had become a business model developed and adopted to solve day-to-day problems.

“For example,” the vice president noted, “Ross is a technology system that can research and offer a legal opinion. Questions are put to it, and it provides answers, even touching on case and statute law.”

This “phenomenon,” according to him, raises pertinent questions for the legal profession as to how the legal system will deal with “this competitive process.”

“It is interesting to see that during the recent JUSUN strike, the Supreme Court delivered some judgments by Zoom,” he further pointed out.

In his virtual address, Mr Osinbajo further stated that technological changes had become a major threat to the survival of the legal profession.

He urged that the profession must keep in tune with changes.

“The theme of this year’s law week, ‘Disruption, Innovation, and the Bar,’ is of tremendous importance today,” he said.

(NAN)