BRIDGING the digital divide between Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the legal profession, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has launched the Digital Bar Initiative (DBI) aimed at bringing together men of the profession.

Specifically, the Digital Bar Initiative, a joint effort of both the NBA and Technology Advisor (TA) will be making use of a portal with the use of an automated card like the popular automatic teller machine (ATM), that will portray the identity of every registered member of the law profession.

According to the President of the NBA, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, at the official launch of the scheme in Lagos recently, it is a key technology project aimed at re-positioning the legal profession that will bring everybody closer.

Akeredolu said the card is designed to guard against fake lawyers who go about practicing without adequate licence to do so.

"There many people who roam our courts today and actually represent clients' cases, but whose only claim to the legal profession is the fact they are endowed with a sense of talkativeness and reckless bravado, and have enough money to purchase a set of wig and gown! These people have poisoned our professional integrity, caused unwarranted embarrassment to the bar.

"It is the sincere desire of my administration to put an end to the so-called fake lawyer syndrome, and save our noble profession and unsuspecting justice-seeking clients from the embarrassment arising from the activities of these charlatans called fake lawyers. To enable us achieve this, we have turned to technology," stated the NBA president.

He explained that with the DBI, they should enroll every Nigerian lawyer with a unique identity and issue him or her PINs, upon which credentials a Bar Card will be issued to them.

The Bar Card, he said, will be issued by CHAMS Plc, a technology partner and that it will carry a chip, which will be embedded, not only with the biometrics of the lawyers but also other key information that relate to details of their professional qualifications, like the year of call, enrolment number, the university attended, the law school campus attended, any former names, incase of people that have married or for whatever reason legitimately have changed their names and so on.

Arguably, he said the Bar Card is not a stand-alone credentials that anyone who knows what it looks like can go and reproduce with his picture on it. "It is part of a trust system, which will have the functionality of authentication."

The Senior Advocate stressed that identity is a big part of the DBI, but that it does not stop there, "we are concerned about the slow pace with which our profession as a whole is embracing technology. Most law firms in the country do not have basic law practice management software to power their legal services."

He further explained that the DBI Bar Card is not just a card, but a General Multi Purpose Card (GMPC), which will enable a range of transactions and payment, stressing that one of the few things the NBA had suffered difficulties managing was the logistics around payment.

Akeredolu added that the DBI would now make the NBA more accountable and transparent in their dealings, adding that the portal will also serve as an enabler for interaction amongst the lawyers just like Facebook, the popular online community.

In his own address, the Managing Partner and Chairman DBI, Basil Udotai, said the DBI came at the time the ills of the global economic recession had just become clear and things had gotten worse and on the minds of everyone was the issue of how much credit system in general and abuse of credit cards in particular led to this near collapse of the global economic system.

Udotai said that the DBI technology has the following as its key functionalities: Identity and authentication of lawyers; access to legal resources and general information; communication and interaction; transactions and payment.

Others are remote services; technology acquisition scheme and Internet connectivity.

Explaining further, he said they discovered that more than 60 per cent of fake lawyers are actually individuals who undertook various stages of legal education, but without completing to the point of call, that some even took law school exams but could not finish because of the toughness. He said the DBI is aimed to eradicate fake lawyers through the system of identification and authentication, with the credential of an immutable, traceable Bar Card.

Furthermore, the DBI chairman said on the portal will also be general information of interest which would be made available to members as well as links to unlimited array of resources that lawyers would find interesting, personally and professionally. He added that the DBI portal would explore all available communication technology to ease communication among lawyers.

Also, that the technology will enable lawyers who have transactional needs meet them as and when due, such as the payment of professional fees.

Udotai added that the capacity of lawyers to acquire computers have been worked out. This, he said, is in consonance with VEDA computer systems, not only at affordable costs, but also through various schemes that make payment.

"It is a great pride for me to live to see this day that our profession is making a well-coordinated in-road into the ICT environment," he stressed.

According to him, the portal will be sustained in the Nigerian typical environment, because they will be working in partnership with CHAMS to secure it and that the funds will be available to keep the system working.

Udotai, who said this will give an indisputable credentials to lawyers that they can use to signify their membership of the noble profession, added that this will rub positively on the Nigerian economy, in the sense that the more people are online, the more efficient the system is, because online is an enabler that help a lot.