Abuja — Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Dr. Tahir Mamman has said that law faculties floated during moratorium would be considered illegal and unapproved by the Council of Legal Education and the National Universities Commission (NUC).

Addressing the call to bar ceremony of 3,374 candidates who have passed prescribed examinations and met other standards required by the Council of Legal Education and the Body of Benchers for call to Bar yesterday in Abuja, Mamman said students who passed through unathourised law faculties will not be admitted into the Nigerian Law School.

The Director-General said that the Council of Legal Education will soon start referring law Professors and teachers managing illegal law faculties to the disciplinary committee of the Body of Benchers, if they are still members of the legal profession, adding that their conduct is unethical and undermines the foundation of the legal profession.

He said the candidates called were the first products of the new curriculum in the Nigerian Law School which came with a different active teaching method that involved students through out the year in practical activities on lawyering skills and ethics.

Mamman added that there were reforms and activities driven by the Council of Legal Education and the Nigerian Law School for a modernised and qualitative legal education in the Nigerian Law School and universities. In his address, the chairman of the Body of Benchers and a Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Aloysius Iyorgyer Katsina-Alu charged the new wigs to, at all times defend and uphold the dignity of the legal profession by reflecting honesty, justice and fairness in their practice.

"You must acquaint yourselves with the rules of professional conduct for legal practitioners which are governed by the provisions of the Legal Practitioners Act, now in CAP L 11, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004", he charged.

He warned that the Body of Benchers will exercise its statutory powers to discipline any lawyer who fails to live up to the standard required in the profession.