Careers

Careers Charles Anthony’s lawyers and other professionals serve a diverse portfolio of clients in complex and innovative matters. Naturally, we seek the most talented and motivated individuals to help sustain and grow our practice. We are deliberately designed as a compact sized law firm. That in itself places limitations on the number of staff we are able to retain at any given time. Despite that, we are constantly on the look-out for outstanding lawyers who possess the Charles Anthony Spirit. Employment opportunities at our firm consist of an internship programme, fresh law and non-law graduates and mid-career positions. Internship Programme Six slots exist at our firm each year for interns from the Nigerian Law School. Two of our internship positions are reserved exclusively for recipients of the Professor Anthony Adeogun Memorial Prize for the best overall students in the law of contract and industrial law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lagos. Interns receive a small allowance during their internship and are allocated to dispute resolution and litigation practitioners so that they can gain a well rounded experience. Candidates would be well advised to apply to our Practice Manager by e-mail in good time as the competition for places is stiff. Continuing Legal Education (CLE) At Charles Anthony, the traditions we have inherited from our parent firm make it almost obligatory, that we take the continuing legal education and career development of our lawyers and other professional staff seriously. We believe that lawyers’ best develop their skills through a combination of on-the-job work experience and formal training. We provide an array of in-house training seminars for all our lawyers throughout the year. More advanced training seminars are geared to help lawyers of all levels keep abreast of developments in their areas of practice and continue to hone their skills. Experiencing Other Jurisdictions We encourage our lawyers to consider secondment to any of our associates in other jurisdictions with whom we have long-standing relationships at some point in their careers. Our lawyers have the opportunity to work with their colleagues from the indigenous and foreign firms with whom we collaborate and can expect to be occasionally assigned to travel with lawyers on assignments.

‘Remuneration of Nigerian Judicial Officers is Appalling’

Nigeria, without any iota of doubt, has some of the brightest legal minds in the world. Both at home and in the diaspora, Nigerian Lawyers have distinguished themselves with expertise in diverse areas of law. Dr Charles Adeogun-Phillips is one such shining stars; a former Prosecutor/Senior Counsel at the United Nations’ International Criminal Court who recently received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Warwick, has done outstanding work in international criminal prosecutions, chasing ‘bad guys’ all over the world, with a view to bringing them to justice, whether for crimes against humanity and war crimes, or financial misdeeds. He has done so, with a good measure of success. He told Onikepo Braithwaite and Jude Igbanoi in a chat last week, how most of his prosecutorial work has helped to set the much-needed precedents where they didn’t exist. He has also demonstrated his willingness to help in the home front, while firmly advocating that Nigeria needs more Judges and better conditions of service for them Congratulations on your Conferment of LLD by your alma mata, Warwick University. Tell us briefly about how you ended up as a pioneer lead Genocide and War Crimes Prosecutor at the United Nations? You were a lead Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The case of Mikaeli Muhimana, Councillor of Gishyita Sector for crimes against humanity, rape and genocide, in which he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, was one of the 12 precedent-setting international cases you prosecuted. Many have referred to the 2020 incident at the Lekki Toll Plaza as a massacre, crime against humanity etc. In the light of your experience with such matters, does it qualify to be called that? Thank you. It was indeed, a great privilege and honour to be invited to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Warwick, and be placed in such distinguished ranks as those of past honourees such as President Nelson Mandela, who received a similar honour in 1996. I however, do not take it for granted. I hope to continue to be a worthy advocate for the University, and a standard bearer for the legal profession. My work with the United Nations and in the area of international criminal law in particular, remains a significant milestone in both my career and life. With the genocide convention of 1948 having only existed on paper, and the trials of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 serving as my only precedent, my work as a Lead Prosecutor at the UN, fighting for justice on behalf of over 800,000 victims of the worst crimes ever known to mankind for well over a decade, placed me in the forefront of several pioneering developments in the field of international criminal law. Sadly, I also gained first-hand experience of the extent of man’s inhumanity to man. So aged 31, I joined the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UN-ICTR) in January 1998, from private practice in the United Kingdom having been appointed to that position by the then Chief UN Prosecutor, H.E Justice Louise Arbour (former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and later UN High Commissioner for Human Rights). What I had initially thought would be a short-term sabbatical from the rigours of practice as a “white-collar” criminal defence solicitor in London and an opportunity to engage in precedent setting international human-rights work, eventually lasted well over a decade. For over a decade, between January 1998 and June 2010, I prosecuted, with great success, 12 precedent-setting and complex international trials of those responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 10 of which I led as lead prosecution counsel, making me arguably one of the most experienced and successful genocide prosecutors in history. My elevation in 2001, to the rank of Senior Counsel before an international court at the age of 35, by the then Chief UN Prosecutor, H.E Ms. Carla Del Ponte (former Attorney-General of Switzerland), was equally unrivalled. Between 2007 and 2008, I also served as the Head of Special Investigations, under the leadership of the then Chief UN Prosecutor H.E. Justice Hassan Jallow, (former Judge of the Special Court for Sierra-Leone and now the current Chief Justice of The Gambia). In leading the prosecution of these genocide cases before the UN court, I was involved in historic and ground-breaking international legal practice in what was soon to become, the fastest growing and emerging area of public international law, cumulating in my citation in the maiden edition of Creswell’s “Who’s Who in Public International Law” in 2007, and in the International Yearbook and Statesmen’s Who’s Who in 2011. This precedent-setting work involved tackling several novel substantive and procedural issues never addressed before in international law. The jurisprudence engendered in these international trials contributed to the development of international criminal law which hitherto, only existed on paper and has helped strengthen and preserve this emerging system of transitional justice. Indeed, this was the first time the scope of international law was extended beyond governing the relationship between countries, to making individuals accountable for violations of international law and norms. It was indeed, a watershed moment in public international law. There were challenges both in terms of the substantive and the procedural law. For example, only the crime of genocide was codified. Even at that, it only existed on paper as of 1997. Unlike the genocide convention, the law of crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention, but has primarily been developed through the evolution of customary international law derived from the cases we were prosecuting. As you have rightly observed, I led the trial of serial rapist Mikaeli Muhimana, involving charges of sexual violence and cruelty against women, between 2004 and 2005. I think that was actually my fifth international trial. The Muhimana case not only clarified, but developed the jurisprudence of the international criminal law on the legal elements and definition […]

‘Lawyers mustn’t aid corruption’

Until last week, Charles Adeogun-Phillips represented the Federal Government in the trial of Supreme Court Justice Sylvester Ngwuta. His sudden withdrawal from the case has been subject of media speculations. But he declines to speak on the issue for the sake of client-counsel relationship. At 35 in March 2001, Adeogun-Phillips was appointed a senior trial attorney and lead counsel at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, leading teams of international lawyers in the prosecution of persons involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 civilians were killed. In this interview with Senior Correspondent JOSEPH JIBUEZE, he speaks on the anti-corruption war, appointment of Chief Justice of Nigeria, judicial reforms, why there is low conviction in high profile cases, Southern Kaduna killings and genocide. From your experience from multiple jurisdictions, could you highlight the areas of criminal justice administration that need urgent reform? As stakeholders in the administration of justice system, I guess the first question we should ask ourselves is: who is best placed to superintend over the proper administration of a court? We need to employ proper court administrators who do not have to be lawyers, but who are experienced at running institutions. Essentially, we need to introduce a central case management system that runs across the courts. More importantly, there is a need to create more judges.  In England & Wales, they have a system of hiring part-time judges from the Bar, who are called Recorders. This category of judges can be tasked to undertake a certain level of cases leaving full-time High Court judges to take control of the heavier caseload. That said, there is a need to improve the quality of judges. They should consider appointing some of them who have distinguished themselves in their careers in legal practice. Cases that are set down for trial should be given realistic length of trial estimates and then all trials should run on consecutive days until the conclusion of the evidence. Timetables can then be set for closing addresses and the judgment of the court. I have often wondered why a judge would be required to read an entire judgment in court, instead of a summary of the said judgment following which certified copies of the said judgment could be distributed to the parties thereafter. An average judgment in a case before an international court is typically approximately 400 pages. I cannot imagine any judge in those courts having to read the entire text in a hearing; it is simply a waste of time and resources. The same should be done with interlocutory rulings. In addition, I have always wondered why I, as a party in a case, have to apply for a copy of the judgment in my own case. Doesn’t that go without saying? I see no reason why that should be necessary. The fees for obtaining a certified copy of a judgment can be charged by the court upfront when the filing of the court processes occur and the judgment should be delivered in summary and copies given to the parties right there in the court. This would save valuable time. What other observations have you? Another major challenge I have in litigating cases in this jurisdiction is the inability of judges to observe the demeanour of witnesses who testify before them because they are busy recording the proceedings by hand. This is further compounded by the fact that there are no video recordings of court proceedings which the judges could refer to if necessary to observe the demeanour of the witnesses that appeared in the case. In that regard, courts should be equipped with court reporters and/or a transcription service to allow judges take their own notes only when necessary.  This would speed up trials and court proceedings and would also create a new cadre of court professionals known as judicial or court reporters, who could either be internally sourced or outsourced to companies that can provide the service. The cost will be borne by the parties who could apply for such transcripts at a reasonable cost. Another aspect that I have found strange in this jurisdiction is that judges would, on their own, seek to re-schedule cases where the parties have not turned up in court and have not provided any prior written communication to the court for their absence. Such cases should simply be struck out but without prejudice to the parties to reinstate them at their own cost. This will help unclog the court docket. What role should lawyers play? Lawyers representing parties in criminal matters should be required to: (i) set out the issues in the cases; (ii) Anything that is not in issue should (if absolutely necessary) be put into written admissions that are agreed by both sides; (iii) the defence should, following a prosecution case summary, submit a defence case statement setting out in broad terms what the accused persons defence to the charge is and what parts of a witness statement is challenged.   Lawyers should be discouraged from raising points of law that have absolutely no merit and are merely used as a way of delaying trials – points of law should be raised and adjudicated on were possible before the trial commences. You were among lawyers leading President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight. How can the war against corruption be won? There are broadly two kinds of corruption – that driven by greed and that driven by need.  For an effective war against each of these forms of corruption, different measures will be required.  For acts of corruption driven by greed, which is more limited in occurrence, there should not be untouchables. This will serve the dual purpose of setting a clear sense of purpose, and deterring future conduct. To fight corruption driven by need, there must be a clear sense of purpose. In that regard, the government must provide basic amenities and satisfy basic necessities of life, including jobs, education, health, infrastructure and others. There must be a zero tolerance for corruption and they must […]