The Association of Law Firms Administrators Nigeria (ALAN) has urged Nigerian law firms to move beyond personality-driven practice and deliberately build institutions capable of scaling, preserving knowledge, retaining clients and surviving beyond their founders.
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The call was made at the fifth edition of ALAN’s Annual Managing Partners Roundtable held in Lagos under the theme, “The Scalable Law Firm: The New Equation for Thriving.”
The event brought together managing partners, law firm administrators and professionals responsible for the business and operational management of law firms across the country.
In her opening remarks, ALAN President, Modupe Olusoga, said the roundtable was designed not merely as a gathering of law firm administrators but as a platform for confronting critical questions about how legal practices are managed and positioned for long-term sustainability.
According to her, while legal excellence has traditionally formed the foundation of law practice, firms seeking to thrive must also pursue excellence in management.
She said participants were expected to interrogate whether the firms they were building had the governance structures, systems and institutional capacity required to scale, remain competitive and ultimately pass successfully to another generation.
Delivering the keynote address, Osaro Eghobamien, SAN, identified three major requirements for scaling a law firm — building people, institutionalising clients and protecting the firm’s culture.
Eghobamien said law firms must continuously invest in the professional development of their people while deliberately changing the mindset that treats clients as belonging to individual lawyers.
He argued that firms must move from the idea of “my client” to “the firm’s client,” ensuring that client relationships are institutional rather than tied exclusively to particular partners or lawyers.
He also stressed that firms seeking sustainable growth must understand their clients’ businesses beyond the immediate legal services they provide.
According to him, the future of Nigerian law firms cannot be built by firms operating in isolation. While firms will continue to compete for business, he said they must also collaborate in areas that strengthen capacity and the wider legal services industry.
The panel session featured Soji Awogbade, Olujoke Aliu, Toyin Gbagi, Olaniyi Yusuf and Oluwakemi Ajayi, with Ekundayo Onajobi serving as moderator.
Gbagi drew a distinction between growth and scale, warning law firms against equating an increase in size with institutional advancement.
According to her, growth represents an increase in size, while scale represents an increase in value, meaning that firms seeking long-term sustainability should focus on the value they create rather than merely the number of lawyers, offices or clients they accumulate.
Aliu said scaling required a clearly defined vision and a deliberate commitment to building an institution capable of existing beyond its founders.
She said that vision must shape a firm’s governance framework, operational systems and approach to decentralised decision-making.
“Scaling is built into the firm’s daily operations,” she said, stressing that institutional growth could not be achieved through a single restructuring exercise or one-off intervention.
Yusuf, speaking on the conversion of individual expertise into institutional knowledge, said law firms must develop documented methodologies for carrying out their work and ensure that such processes are regularly reviewed and updated.
He also emphasised the importance of cultural alignment and reward systems that encourage lawyers and other professionals to share knowledge rather than retain expertise solely as individual intellectual capital.
Ajayi, addressing the transition from personality-led firms to institution-led practices, called for deliberate succession planning, effective transfer of organisational culture and sustained team building.
She said firms must avoid situations where clients have only one point of contact within the organisation, arguing that institutional relationships require multiple lines of engagement.
She further stressed the need for firms to understand the reasons behind their existing systems and processes so that those structures can be transferred, improved and sustained as leadership changes.
The panelists also agreed that lawyers alone could not successfully scale modern law firms without collaboration with professionals handling business and administrative responsibilities.
They said chief operating officers, practice managers, business development professionals and other non-legal executives must clearly understand and communicate the value they bring to the organisation, while lawyers must equally recognise their contributions as essential to the success and sustainability of the firm.
The discussions ultimately centred on the need for Nigerian law firms to institutionalise their clients, knowledge, culture, governance and leadership succession, rather than allowing the future of a practice to remain dependent on the reputation or personal relationships of its founders.
In her closing remarks, ALAN Vice-President Grace Oyeniyi urged participants to translate the lessons from the roundtable into practical changes within their organisations.
“The value of today’s conversation would be measured by what is done differently,” she said.
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