In the second part of our exclusive interview with Aminat Lawal, she talks about her Mentors, Facts about her Academic Journey, Legal Practice, Alumni Network, and Academic Sphere.
For the sake of the reading audience, I know you said that you like to receive mentorship from afar, but are there specific mentors that helped you with your success?
Oh yeah, definitely. There are so many.
I’d have to refer to it like, she’s a mentor from afar because I think I’ve only interacted with her once when I became a VJ and she congratulated me, but I followed her and I told her as well when we interacted that I’ve followed her story from when I was in Hundreds of Room.
She has been doing extremely great work and just seeing that that is possible, even though I’m not really interested in oil and gas, at least I don’t think right now, who knows, and I might not be going into the energy space like she’s in, just seeing that doing those things is possible is great.
Looking back on your academic journey, is there anything you would have done differently?
Looking at how serious I was in law school, I think if I had been more serious in UI, maybe, but I don’t know if I would have done it differently because if I had been more serious, maybe I would have done all the other extracurricular things that I did, so I guess.
Example of a time when you had to apply legal reasoning to a situation outside of a formal legal setting.
Okay, so I don’t know if this is legal reasoning, but I recently moved to Lagos, so I just, I was in the process of trying to get a place for the longest time, for like a month, and I don’t know if anybody here has tried to get a place in Lagos, but honestly, that experience is an experience.
I mean, you’re female, and all those things, and I remember, I just sat, and I don’t know if it’s like, maybe legal reasoning or just knowing the law, because I’ve always been a big believer that I think people should study law for one year.
After all, people need to know their rights, and like this, there are just so many stories that Lagos landlords are telling me, and I was like, but this is not the law like this is not what the law says, and I think it’s not even just that, it’s just generally, like, you see people just take things as they are.
So I don’t know if I directly answered your question, but all the legal reasoning that I’m thinking about is legal reasoning that I’ve had to do at work, which is honestly a professional setting, so I’m not applying this instance.
The University of Ibadan has a strong alumni network. How do you plan to leverage this network to support your future academic endeavours?
I was going to say thank God for law school because now I think that maybe a lot of you, I know a lot more people than I did. After all, when something like this just happens, you get to speak to a lot of people, and people tend to reach out to you.
I just think it’s like a quick recruiting, so if you need to act on points, I need something, or, yeah, I think, like, just speaking to people, which is one thing I’ve been doing, because, okay, right now, I work in the law firm. And maybe forever, I don’t want to work in the law firm, so maybe in, maybe five years, or ten years, whenever I want to leave my job, it’s just speaking to other people who are doing other things.
Like, I recently started speaking to someone recruited from UI that is a consultant, and speaking to him and asking about daily life, what he does for work, that’s also, like, opening my eyes to other experiences, or speaking to someone from UI that is going to Stanford or is an engineer, or just people that are doing, like, really amazing great things, which, like, UI has a lot of.
So, just speaking to them and hearing their experience. Another thing that UI helps me with the alumni network is knowing that things are possible because I’m, I know I’ve said this a lot, but I’m a big believer in when you see people that you know do things, maybe you don’t know personally, but people that you’ve met before, it makes you feel like you can do it as well.
So, yeah, when I see UI students go to Oxford, and Harvard, and all these schools, I’m like, oh, that’s very possible for me as well.
So, if at any point in my life, I were at that stage where I think that I want to go to these schools to do these things, I know that I could always reach out to them and say, oh, hi, I went to the University of Ibadan as well, I just, I would like to, whatever, just reach out to me in a polite manner.
Speaking about the academic sphere, when it comes to law, is there anything that you would like to be better?
I think there are many things that could be better. First, I think that the five years we spend in school is too long. Because, in my opinion, we spend five years doing things that we go to law school and do in ten months.
Like, I don’t know, I think the ten months I spent in law school were more useful in my life than five years of law. I don’t know. I think that it could be shortened to three years, and then maybe, like, one year for law school.
Another thing is, I also think that the legal system in itself, like, our academic system is a bit off.
To say in law school that your lowest grade is your score is ridiculous.
I think that’s too focused on academic excellence, which makes law students one-track-minded. I don’t know.
I also think that we can provide financial aid because law school is now getting ridiculously expensive. And people can’t even go to law school.
Is there a specific award that, you know, that is very significant to you that you appreciate?
So I think for me, it’s the Council of Global Education Star Prize, solely because when I was getting that award, my parents were able to come up on stage and celebrate the award with me.
I remember my lecturer in law school talking about someone who won the award, and I got so emotional when she was talking about it because she talked about how her mom ran up to the stage.
I remember sitting particularly dead in law school and wondering if that would be me. So I just really like that’s the award that comes to my mind every time, just my parents being on stage with me.
