ASSESSSING THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) ON LEGAL EDUCATION AND LEGAL PRACTICE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The transformative paradigm shift caused by the infiltration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the Nigerian legal architecture has occasioned a widening institutional gap. While the commercial legal marketplace rapidly automates, institutional legal education remains anchored to static, analog methodologies, creating an immediate risk of professional obsolescence and regulatory non-compliance. The paper assesses the dual impact of AI automation on public and private law faculties, the Council of Legal Education curriculum, and contemporary realities within adversarial and corporate legal practices. Adopting a qualitative, doxo-doctrinal research methodology, the study analyses domestic statutes, regulatory instruments, and contemporary peer-reviewed legal literature. The paper finds that that while AI serves as an operational force multiplier that drastically reduces judicial case backlogs and processing times, its unregulated application introduces acute threats. These include algorithmic hallucinations of judicial precedents, critical breaches of client confidentiality under the Rules of Professional Conduct, data privacy violations under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, and an uncritical reliance that erodes analytical rigour. The paper concludes that AI is an inevitable socio-legal evolution requiring proactive, structural management rather than defensive rejection. The paper recommends a comprehensive curricular overhaul by the Council of Legal Education, the institutionalisation of binding AI ethical rules by the Nigerian Bar Association, and the establishment of an open-access national legal data registry to domesticate algorithms.