For justice to be done in a democratic society, legal information is considered as one of its essential ingredients. Legal information is empowering for poor clients seeking access to justice, in their relationships to opponents, to lawyers and to judges. It helps clients to take control and can enhance their bargaining position and Streetlawyer Naija is working to make this possible for Nigerians.
Generally, people tend to fear what they don’t understand and that also applies to the laws of the country as well. A lot of Nigerians perceive the law as confusing and would rather not attend any court proceedings. People seem to perceive the law as confusing and would rather not have anything to do with the court, and StreetLawyer Naija is working to change that perception, as the more people understand their rights, the more the legal system gets better.
StreetLawyer Naija is a platform that started out in 2019 with the aim of enlightening and educating Nigerians of their rights in the most simplified words. The platform covers content on topics that revolve around Business Law, Cyber Law, Laws on Election, Property Law, Wills, etc
The Team…
Onyinyechi Ezeoke started the platform by reaching out to lawyers within her network who wanted to be a part of the team with her. Two years down the line, StreetLawyer Naija has grown to a team of 11 lawyers who, although in active practice, are dedicated to contributing content to the platform. Currently, all lawyers on the team work as volunteers and interestingly, the team has had applications from other people that want to be a part of the team, and even on a volunteer basis. This has given a certain validation to what the team is trying to do.
On the side of feedback, the team has gotten quite a good number of positive feedback from their readers, as they get answers to their questions through the content on the platform. For instance, a good number of Nigerians do not know that there is something called the breach of promise to marry and that there are legal consequences to such breach. You cannot just promise to marry someone and then change your mind like NEPA (If you know, you know). This is not just a law in theory and StreetLawyer Naija wrote about it.
Monetization of Information…
From the beginning, the plan was never to monetize access to legal information on the platform but rather to make it a free for all. Recently, the team was able to get google adsense on the platform. With increased reach and engagement on the platform, Onyinye believes that lawyers working for StreetLawyer Naija will be able to get compensated.
The Future…
StreetLawyer Naija has been on for 2 years now and in that time, the platform has been able to help answer the legal questions of a lot of Nigerians. ‘We are working on an app for StreetLawyer Naija and we intend to launch before the end of this year’, says Onyinyechi. The app will have features where users can access the services of a lawyer closest to them. The long term plan is to become the go-to platform for Nigerians to get answers to all their legal related questions around any topic.
People need to remove that idea that the law does not work. Granted that there are times when things in the system don’t go as planned, but that doesn’t invalidate the other times that the law does work. With Streetlawyer Naija, knowledge of your legal rights is going to be a click away.
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