In this interview with Aminat Lawal, she sheds light on her Background, Education and Social Life.
Discover how she attained Double First Class Honours in Law from the University of Ibadan (UI) and Nigerian Law School.
Can you tell us a little about you?
I went to primary school in Lagos. And then I went to secondary school in Kwara. I went to Thomas Adewumi International College, Oko.
I was an art student and I graduated as the second-best graduating student in my set. It was a class of about 110 or thereabout.
Then I went to the University of Ibadan where I studied Law and graduated with a first class.
I’m very passionate about gender equality.
So, I was very focused on that in UI. And then after UI, I went for my service because I went to a public school. I don’t know if many can relate.
So we missed law school for that year. I served in a consulting firm in Abuja.
After that, I resumed law school. I was posted to the Lagos campus.
And right now, I currently work as an associate at G. Elias. I work in the banking and finance capital market and corporate team.
How do you personally define success? And how has that definition evolved over time?
Right now, I think success for me is being at peace, and seeing myself do the things that I want to do, even though I’m not where I want to be yet.
Because I mean, I’m at the beginning of my career. So, even though I’m not where I want to be now, I find many people around me who are inspiring to me and know that I can get to where they are if I work hard.
So when I was in secondary school, and university, I think being in the school environment, success was about doing well in school and having good grades.
And, I think right now, knowing that I can get to where I want to and also make an impact in society, that’s always been important to me, like touching the lives of people that you meet everywhere.
So, I think that that’s my definition of success now.
Having a double first-class honour is a remarkable achievement. When you were in school, what specific habits or study techniques did you take on to attribute to that success?
I think for me, when it comes to academics, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I like to know everything.
The techniques I used in university and in law school were different. In university, it was five years. So, it was a long time to be a CDP.
So I would focus on maybe, okay, if I can do well in these courses, maybe if I don’t understand these courses well. But one thing about me is I always go to people to ask questions. I think maybe that’s one technique, asking questions.
I always ask my peers if a lecturer is teaching and I don’t understand.
But then in law school, law school is just 10 months, so there’s no time to be in the CDP.
So I think the technique I used was to read every single day. Every single day I was in law school, I read something, even if it was just five minutes of reading, 10 minutes of reading, 15 minutes of reading.
And then I think people also underestimate the power of listening in class, because when you listen, you’re already 50% on the way, like you’re already in there, you already have an idea of what the lecturer is saying, what the topic is about. So when you go back to read, you’re just like, you’re repeating that in your head.
Another technique is I’m a person who reads things a couple of times. I don’t like to spend four hours reading one page and hoping that I cram the page in my head. I believe that, if you see something so many times, at some point you start to remember what is in it.
So I can read fast. So I might read a topic in like one hour, maybe it’s taking somebody else five hours, but I don’t mind because I know that the more times I get to read that topic, the more the page looks familiar to me.
If you watch a movie so many times, or you read a book so many times, you’re definitely going to start to remember, even if you were reading it so casually.
How did you prioritise and stay focused on your goals when you were in school?
Okay. So in university, as much as I wanted to make a first-class, that was my goal, but that was not my only goal. I really wanted to experience investing.
I did not want to be a one-track student. So for me, of course, doing academically well was on top, but there were other goals that came with it. One of them was my club.
I registered for the United Nations Foundation Club, and that was really important to me. So that was another priority for me because the goal was to empower and enlighten young girls in our community in Ibadan I went to school in a place where there were many villages and many people that do not know, how important education was for girls. So that was the second goal.
So it was balancing both of them for me because, during my tenure as president, the club was ranked second in impact in Africa by the United Nations. So it was doing school and also doing what I was passionate about.
So I think both of them, as long as school was not faltering, as long as I read what I needed to read, which is something I’ve said a lot in many interviews, which helped me in law school as well because in law school, for me, it was balancing school as well as the social life.
I had heard a lot of stories about people who ran mad in law school and not to say it lightly, but law school is a very daunting experience and I knew that I needed to balance having the life and still being in law school, which seems impossible for a lot of people, but it was something that was really important to me.
So you see me many times, maybe in law school, I’ll be about to go out, maybe to go ask my friend and I’ll just be walking up and down reading. So as long as I had to read what I had to read that day, as long as I did that, every other thing was extra, so I could do with my time as much as I wanted.
The University of Ibadan has a firm hold when it comes to research. Did you participate in any research projects during your undergraduate studies? And if you did, how did that contribute to your intellectual growth?
Besides my final year projects, my faculty wasn’t, one of the research hubs, but I did a lot of personal research.
And I think that contributing to my intellectual growth was maybe the foundation of everything because I’m a person that likes to read a lot, not even just school books. I like to read about a lot of topics.
And I think that knowing a little about things can help to take your way into even academics because you see a question and you’re like, I have an idea, I’ve read this in a book.
So maybe you, you know that this is supposed to come up here or something like that. I remember a lot of my exams at the University of Ibadan, maybe this also helped me in law school.
The way I read is I like to paint the picture. So I like to put everything together.
If a lecturer is saying something in class, I’ll just go define the topic. I’m going to look for like a funny story about it or, something that would make it clear in my mind. So criminal litigation wasn’t just criminal litigation.
I would try to insert criminal litigation into civil litigation and see how everything would come together. And maybe that helped me in UI where, I mean, students are very serious. They like doing research.
The Nigerian law school curriculum is complex as we’ve heard. Did you discover any areas of law that particularly fascinated you?
Oh, yes.
I think every single thing in law school was new to me. My university curriculum was not, I guess, in some schools, they already did some law school topics, but there were so many things I had not heard of before. Particularly corporate law, which was not my favourite course, but I was very impressed by it.
It’s like when you’re watching a movie and you see people saying like, what is the law in this thing? And then like now I’m like, oh, I understand what they’re saying.
Like recently I started watching Suits because everybody asked me now that I’m practising law, what I’m doing, is it like suits? And I’m like, oh, well, that’s not what I’m personally doing, but I understand now. So I think that I found corporate law very fascinating.
I think it was the most different thing because I’m in property law, you know, that people buy land, there’s a lawyer involved, criminals, people, very straightforward.
And I think ethics as well, ethics is very, professional law and ethics was very fascinating, knowing that this profession was not just regulated by laws for the people, but also laws for us.
I guess that’s why lawyers, like to call themselves learned, and I mean, I’m a lawyer now, but because there are so many rules that you have to follow and so many things that you have to do.
So I think corporate law and ethics, but, the entire law school curriculum itself is, was very new to me.
How do you manage your time effectively, especially when juggling multiple responsibilities and high-stakes projects?
I think that that’s one thing that law school taught me very well, how to manage time.
So I do a thing where at the beginning of the day, I still do it now, even as I am working, I write out everything I need to do that day. And as you said earlier, there are priority tasks. I mean, the ideal world is that I get to do, I will be able to do everything I have to do that day.
But sometimes things come up, and I might not be able to finish. So when, when I organize everything I have to do that day, I’ll look at it and I’m like, I’m sure I’ll do this thing. So maybe it might take me like one hour to get to do it, but I know that I’ll do it really fast and I’ll do it really well.
So maybe it might take me like five minutes or 10 minutes. So I already know myself and I know how long something is going to take me. So it’s just making sure that I do as much as I can that day.
And not even just in work, just like in life as well, being, I live by myself now. I try to do as much as I can during the week so that I can rest on the weekends. So it’s just like balancing your time and making sure that you do the things that are important.
Yeah. And I guess in law school, it’s just knowing that your priority should be school. Like I said, just 10 months, then you have time to do every other thing you want to do in this world.
Can you share an example of a significant obstacle you faced during your time in law school and how you overcame it?
I don’t know if this is too personal, but I ended a relationship in law school.
So I think that that was like probably the most emotional thing that happened to me in law school.
Because it was, I don’t think that law school is a place where super emotional things should be happening to people. But I think that another thing law school is really good at, it’s good at taking your time.
law school knows how to encompass your entire life that you almost forget that other things, like other things in the world, are happening. Like you forget that life is even going by.
Okay, I think one obstacle was my room, I mean, I was on the Lagos campus and I don’t know, Lagos Island in general has water issues and my room was on the first floor.
So I barely ever had water in my room. This seems like a very minute thing, but it was such a serious thing because just not seeing water, like when you should come back from class and be thinking about how you want to read and be thinking about water.
I’m trying to think of other things, but I don’t know. I feel like law school is a jealous, it’s a jealous friend. It takes your entire life.
Throughout your studies, did you encounter any professors who significantly influenced your academic trajectory? If so, how did their mentorship contribute to your success?
Okay, well I’m not, I’m not really the person that really gets close to lecturers.
So I’ll probably not be able to name anybody, but I like to examine people from afar. I like to think that I like a lot of distance mentoring because I don’t like someone telling me what to do every day, but I like to watch how people navigate their lives.
So there are a couple, both in university and in law school. I like watching women excel in places where women don’t usually excel. So anytime I see a woman doing great things, it’s always inspiring, and I’m a person who likes to stalk from afar.
So I like to read and see what they’ve done and examine them from afar
As you’ve explained, law school wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. So how did you keep yourself motivated? How did you maintain, rather, your drive and enthusiasm?
I think the first thing I did when I got to law school was to surround myself with people who had the same goal as mine.
And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but my goal in law school was to make it first class. So the first thing was to surround myself with people that wanted to make first class, because there’s a mindset with it, there’s a way that they push, there’s a way that they drive.
So everybody that was surrounding me, my roommates, my friends, the people I sat beside in class, everybody I was around wanted to make it first class.
So at any point where I wanted to drop, or I felt unmotivated, or I felt tired, it was very easy to look around. Because I personally, I personally believe that your peers are the best people to go to.
That’s why I’ve never been close to lecturers, seniors, or anybody, because they are not the ones going through the same thing I’m going through right now.
So if I had a bad day in class, or I really don’t understand what the lecturer is saying, I’m the first person to go and whine and tell my friends I don’t understand so they can explain to me, or I’m getting frustrated.
I remember I had a friend I used to read with, and she was in Port Harcourt campus, and we used to schedule calls where we would just talk about non-academic things, like all the non-academic problems in law school, like water, like how long the classes were.
So it was very easy to stay motivated having this kind of people around me, I remember close to exams, I was telling my roommates I wanted to give up, and she was like, no, no, no, we have to, we have to make it, we’ve gone so far.
So yeah, I think that just surrounding yourself with people like that is great.
How do you approach continuous learning and self-improvement in both your personal and professional life?
In my personal life, I’m always learning, like if you said something that I did not know, immediately after, or even if, it’s not rude of me, I would definitely go and just check out what you’re saying, and just like know it.
I don’t know it in a way that I want to come and impress you, just know it’s like, that’s something I know.
Then professional development, it’s something I’m currently struggling with, because I just started working, and I feel, most days I feel overwhelmed, I feel like I have a lot of work.
So I’m trying to, I’m trying to schedule days where I used to actually grow, and just outside of work, also grow professionally.
So I think that that’s one thing I’m trying to do, I try to take courses, during all these strikes that we had, I always try to take courses, try to learn, and even like reading books, reading novels, watching videos, also good ways to learn.
Beyond textbooks, handouts, and lectures, what resources or learning materials did you find particularly valuable in your academic journey?
In university, I think it was just textbooks. I like to watch YouTube videos a lot as well. There are some topics that were a bit unclear to me in university, and I recall that I watched some videos that explained them to me.
For law school, people who graduated from law school with a first class, I used their notes. In law school, law school lecturers don’t really like such notes, but I think that using such notes wisely is what I would say because things in law school are always changing, so you use it in the sense that what your lecturer says, is still the best.
But yeah, in law school, I think that that was, that was the that was like a major thing I used in law school. I don’t recall using any external sources. I didn’t even watch YouTube videos in law school.
I just focused on my lecturers.
How did you go about nurturing connections with the seriousness of law school?
I don’t think I networked in law school. I think I said I had a social life, right? Now that I meet people from law school I’m like, I don’t remember because law school is so wild.
I don’t even remember speaking to some people. Well, nurturing the few relationships that I made, I think it’s just checking up on people a few times. I think the worst thing to do when you have networks is to think that you should only reach out to people when you need them because then it becomes the thing where you’re only using them.
So it doesn’t have to be text them every day, text them every week. But when someone crosses my mind, definitely I reach out to them. If I see something that I’m a big fan of if I see something that I think someone I know would be interested in sending out to them, is another good way.
I think even generally networking, I don’t know, people like to network up. I think networking in your level is genuinely the best way to network because you’re going to grow together and when anything comes, they’re going to think about you. So yeah, I think I like to be friendly.
I think I’m a friendly person. So maybe I’m not friends with a lot of people, but if genuinely, if I see something that I think someone in my network would like or would benefit from sending to them, reaching out to them, just so that you’re not only reaching out to people when you need something from them, I think that’s just important.
Staying up to date in a rapidly evolving field like law is highly essential. What strategies do you employ to stay current on legal developments and advancements in your area of interest?
I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I like to read them on my way to work, or back from work. Honestly, right now, I’ve still not gotten the balance of my work life because work is just work. Maybe on my lunch break, I think I like to read a lot.
So not just school books, I just like to read. And then I like to listen as well. So I have a lot of senior colleagues at work who are doing really well.
And if you’re talking about maybe something that’s recent, there are all these recent trends, I like to listen. And then we have a lot of presentations at work as well. People are presenting on topics that I know.
Yeah, I like to listen to that. And if I just scroll by maybe LinkedIn and I see something that picks my interest, I just read it. And yeah, I think that I’ll try my best to create methods where I will actually stay current.
What strategies do you use to handle stress and maintain composure under pressure?
I mean, just like every human being, I tend to get anxious, I tend to cry a lot. But I think that one thing I do is if I’m stressed, it means that I have a lot of things to do or something I’m doing on my mind. So one thing I do is I write out everything I need to do.
So if I’m like, really, really stressed, I’ll just write everything out. And I think when I write it out, it either seems possible or impossible. And if it’s impossible, then I know that it’s impossible.
I’m going to do my best. But if it’s possible, then I’m like, okay, then it’s possible you can do it. But then if like, if I know that I can’t do it, I think like, either try and move things around.
Another thing is delegating. Not delegate in the sense of, oh, I have authority over people, but sometimes you may be busier than your friends or your friends may be busier than you.
So if it’s things that people can help you with, it’s definitely nice to reach out to your friends and be like, I need to do this thing, can you do it for me? So speaking to people about it would also help.
We understand that the University of Ibadan fosters a strong sense of community. Were you involved in any academic societies or extracurricular activities or anything like that?
Yeah, a lot. I was in the Alternative Spiritual Tradition Society. I was the General Secretary. I was also in a lot of communities in my faculty.
So yeah, there was a lot of community building. Many, most of the things I like and enjoy about, I like and remember fondly about the University of Ibadan and the communities that we had.
So how do these activities shape your academic experience?
I think the first thing they help is to make sure that they are all-round students. The worst thing anybody wants to do, I think, in my opinion, is to go to university and come back with only that degree.
So yeah, joining communities is a way to not even network in the way of, oh, I want you to remember me, just to know people, to speak to people.
And it’s also a way to, I think, I did a program management course after university because I realized planning a lot of programs in my faculty that I really enjoyed program management and project management.
And I’m, I’m a big believer in like, diverse kinds of skills, not staying in one lane. Another thing it helps you to do is just build connections with people because you’re doing part 90 lecture like it’s somebody’s coming to speak at your school.
So that’s a way to say, I have these skills from doing this in university. So I think like, spending, if I spent five years in school and not done anything, I would be so disappointed in myself.
Starting a club, and being the president of the club for three years, is another way, I’m not, I like to say, I like to take instructions, I’m not a leader, but I had to be a leader.
At that time, I had to give instructions and tell people what to do, and it’s a way to know that, oh, things go wrong, and things go right.
And yeah, I think it’s just a way to like build, it’s just important to become an all-round student. I think that’s very, very important, and it’s very easy to fall on the bandwagon of being a one-track student.
