In the second part of our exclusive interview with Rejoice Kalu, the best-graduating student of law from the University of Nigeria, she opens up our Social Life, Religious perspective, monitors and more.
So would you describe yourself as a religious or social person when you were in school?
In school, I mean I don’t classify myself as religious but I’m very spiritual. I’m a Christian and I take my relationship with God very seriously and you know what, that is like the key to success for me, that’s the most important element in my journey.
I was going to save that for the last because it’s the best. My relationship with God, besides academically, shaped me, it really really helped me remain focused because, at every time, I always had an anchor.
So, my relationship with God was my everything, I took it very very seriously even in school. As regards my social life, I always say that I think it’s relative.
It’s relative because some people classify social life as just fun, all of that, partying you know, anything that has to do with interaction with people is social.
So I wasn’t a party person, I am introverted mostly and I’m an indoor person, so I don’t really like to party, partying and all of that is not my thing but I always love to hang out with friends. I had a good social life in my opinion.
I always made sure that I hung out with friends. I did things that involved people but things that I also liked that suited my personality.
I went to conferences, you know, events that will let me network with people, that was part of my personal life so it also helped me unwind. So yes, I’ll say I was social and I took my relationship with God very seriously, not religious or anything but I took my relationship with God very seriously, yeah.
So how did you manage your relationship with God and be in school?
So I get that question a lot. The truth is anybody who tells you that they failed or they didn’t do well because they were a church person and all of that, it’s just one of two things, it’s either you just really lacked time management skills or you just didn’t put in enough work, you know.
It could be any other thing but I think it’s mostly any of those two because, for me, time management was very important. It played an important role because I did a lot of things.
I ran a brand, I had a brand in school, I was earning, and I was active in my extracurricular activities. I was a student judge, I was a chairperson, and I did a lot but here’s the thing, two things for me, number one is prioritisation and number two is time management.
So, you need to be able to prioritise, at every point in time, I always remind myself of why I am in school. The first reason as a student while you are in school is to learn and you owe it to yourself to do well, to perform excellently well.
So that was my primary goal, regardless of my spiritual life, that’s part of who I am. Even without any church activities as I said, some people are just so religious, there are in every single church activity, you can’t do that, you will fail. You can’t be in every single church program.
How to do it, is to plan. I had only one fellowship in school and I took it very seriously, and I’ll tell you something, the average time that I spent in fellowship was, let me see, we had two hours fellowship in one day of the week, just one day of the week.
Now somebody else who’s attending the same fellowship would want to make it seem like that fellowship is the reason they ain’t doing well.
Calculate how many hours you spend in your fellowship or in your church, in church I spend, let’s me say three to four hours, some services are two hours but let’s say your transportation and everything, let’s say three to four hours and mid-week service takes two hours, average you are spending is let’s say six to eight hours in a whole week,
So you see that where the problem is, is in time management, So if you know you are going to take, you are going to be that church person, that person that’s always in fellowship, then you will have to cut down a lot of other things to make sure you also have time to read.
So what I did was to prioritise my academics. You know, it’s very important to me, it’s the most important thing at that point in my life. So I made sure that if I was going to be engrossed in any other thing, I would cut off some other things that would be distractions so that I could create time to study.
I made sure that I studied every single day, every single day, even after spending time, I’ll make time to study.
It’s about time management, once you allocate a specific period of hours to study and see to it, every other thing should fit into the time that is left. If two things are important to you and you allocate time for it, it’s like accounting, once you allocate the time for it and stick to your schedule, you’ll be fine.
They always say school prepares you for life and life will come in a way that if you cannot manage your time wisely, you are going to find out that you are losing out in life.
So I’ll say it again, the two things that really helped me are prioritisation and time management, those two things.
Okay. So how do you keep up with updated and recent trends when it comes to legal stuff and development?
Okay. I mean, we are very lucky now that we are in a digital age, so almost everything you can access online, if you want to keep up with anything, you can access it online.
So many legal platforms, and there’s news every single day. Law firms have their updates so I’ve subscribed to a lot of them, a lot of legal news from law firms, so I believe if there’s anything, you know, new stuff that comes up in the legal sector, I know because I am going to receive a mail.
So I’d like to know, what kept you motivated and focused throughout your days in school?
The same thing, I had a goal, I had a target that I wanted to reach and with every semester that passes, you are closer to it. Just knowing that you know, what we used to do back in school is we count the semesters.
We say, oh, you are in first year, you are in second year, you’ve done two semesters, now eight semesters left, you keep reducing it. With every semester that passes, you are closer to your goal. What really kept me motivated was the goal that I had set for myself.
You wake up every morning, you see it on your wall and you remind yourself that I am very close to this thing and I can still push but then you cannot underestimate the importance of mentors.
I had mentors, I had academic mentors that also tried to because trust me, there were times in school that you are just about to give up and you know, you are so burnt out and just tired and everything but you know when you speak to your mentors, they are able to encourage you and just keep you inspired.
The people that you have around you too like I always say, myself and my friends, we always encourage each other, motivate each other, remind each other that see, we are very very close to this thing.
I can say my close friends, both made first class and that’s because everybody kept each other accountable, we always kept each other accountable so I always emphasised company, the company that you keep really really does matter a lot.
To be very honest, the people before me, every time a set graduates and you see the excellence that some people have been able to achieve, it inspires me and it motivates me to say if this person has achieved this, it means that it’s possible and I can do it.
So that’s also a source of motivation, you can grow strength from other people when you see them do things that you are aspiring to do, you draw strength from them.
Okay. Speaking of mentors, can you briefly tell us who they are, if you can and how they helped you?
Well, I can’t disclose their names or anything, but I had mentors. Some of them were my lecturers, and some of them were lawyers friends that I already had.
How did they help me? First, they kept me accountable, some of my lecturers, I knew that they would see my results before me so I knew that I had to perform well, I did not want to embarrass myself and embarrass them.
So even before the results are out, I know that they have seen it, because they have invested in me. I wanted them to see the return of investment if you invest in someone like you know.
I had this lecturer, I’m going to call his name because he deserves to be applauded by me. For my first year, he took it very seriously, myself and a group of other students.
His name is Ikenna Okoli, God bless him because he invested so much, so much of his time, taking out time to explain things that we don’t understand. In our first year, he had extra tutorials for first-year students and I knew that a lot of investment had gone into me and I just could not afford to waste it, that’s what mentorship does because these people keep you accountable.
When they have invested in you, whether their time, whether their money, their advice, whatever it is, they invest in you, you want to make them proud, you want to make them proud.
My dad is also my mentor because I mean, talking to me every day, advising me, all of that stuff, I wanted to make him proud but you know what above all I wanted to make myself proud, I wanted to make God proud but we are talking about mentors so mentors keep you accountable, mentors show up for you when you often don’t know what to do.
There are times when you need someone in a higher authority to intervene or to sort something out. There are so many things that could happen in school. I know people who have had missing scripts and because they had an academic mentor an academic mentor, and an academic adviser, they were able to find those missing scripts and stuff like that.
Mentors help you keep your head in the game. When they notice that you are swaying, when they notice that your performance is starting to drop, they call you and say Rejoice what is happening, I notice this and this is happening with your results, are you okay? Is there something I can do to help?
Trust me, when someone is invested in you and someone is interested in your progress, they don’t want to see you fail. So I always advise that you should have at least one person in your life who does not want to see you fail, somebody who wants to see you succeed because you can’t do this life alone, nobody is an island.
Sometimes you get distracted but when that person notices, they always call you back to order. So that’s what a mentor does, just seeing their own lives.
Some of my mentors who are not my lecturers, I see the things they exploit that they do outside, I see the heights that they have achieved and I’ll say, this is possible, they inspire me, I want to be like this person, so that’s what mentors do for you.
You know there’s a school of thought that is out there that says education is a scam, so I wanted to know your opinion on that. What do you think about that school of thought, do you think education is actually a scam?
That is a very big lie, please. If you are listening to this anywhere, that is a very big lie. It’s false.
Education is not a scam, especially if you are not a trust fund kid. If you don’t have any trust fund waiting for you somewhere, please take your education seriously.
If you are very good at what you do, if you are the best, it’s already an open door. I can’t tell you how much education has done for me as a person.
I have received so many opportunities, some of them I can’t even disclose on this call but I have received so many opportunities that wouldn’t have come without my education, international opportunities. I left the country, it was on the basis of education, so education is not a scam.
Please take it seriously, it would open a door that you never imagined could be opened for you as an average person who does not have parents who can just do anything for you from anywhere, you don’t have any trust fund waiting for you.
What you have is what you can give, the value that you have is what you can exchange for some of the opportunities. So, it’s not a scam, if you put yourself out there, and do what needs to be done, your education can take you to a height you never imagined, it will open doors for you.
People are looking for game changers, people are looking for excellent people everywhere, and there’s demand for excellence, so if you are able to distinguish yourself through your education, then there is a lot of hope for you, there’s so much that you can do.
It doesn’t mean that it should be the only thing that you are about, do other things, and have skills, you need to be skilled, especially now in 2024, you need to have other skills but it has never been true, it will never be true, education is not a scam, I mean for the fact that you are even a literate and you are educated, that’s already something. So yeah, it’s false.
I’d like to ask you where you see yourself a few years from now. What situation do you imagine yourself to be in a few years from now?
Just like I said before, a few years from now can be the next two years, it can also be the next four years but I see myself being a step closer to my ultimate goal.
I see myself being a stellar lawyer, I might have explored other things by the time that I’m looking at but I see myself a lot closer to the woman that I’ll ultimately become because we are becoming every day.
I said before that long term, I want to be a go-to person in corporate and commercial law, in finance. I see myself doing all of that stuff but a few years from now, I’ll be closer to that.
So, I’d like to know who your role model is. You told us about your mentor, so I don’t know if you have a role model or if they are the same as your mentors?
The role model question, I always take it loosely because well, I have people that inspire me like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, she’s someone that I admire. I admire Chimamanda Adichie, I admire Michelle Obama.
So these people, I don’t really call them my role models because role models are such broader term but I have people that inspire me, especially women that I see and they represent what is possible to me but I know that every single person is unique, every person has an essence and the reason why they are who they are.
One of my favourite quotes from Zit Hitler, says that ‘’You are the only you in the universe and that is your huge responsibility’’.
It means that you have a responsibility to be the most authentic and best version of yourself that you can ever be. I don’t intend to be Michelle Obama one day but she represents excellence and that’s something I want to be associated with.
So in that regard, she could be a role model as a woman who has established herself, same with Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamamda and a lot of other great African women, a lot of women all over the world, they represent some of these things that we want to see ourselves get to but at the end of it all, I am me and the person that I want to see myself be in the future, that’s who I am reaching for, that’s the person I want to be.
So I have this whole conception of the woman that I want to be in the future. Besides all of that, so many people inspire me. I don’t have a name for them but just many people inspire me.
Okay. Thank you for that. I’d like to know, have you ever participated or volunteered in community service while in school?
Yes. Definitely. I did a lot of tutor work just teaching people, and creating awareness. I also was part of a group of people who did an anti-gender-based violence walk with Amnesty International.
They had a collaboration with the Human rights clinic in my school so that was part of public service. I am a very huge SDG advocate which is for education so wherever they do anything that will propel education, you’ll find me there.
That’s something that I really love and while in school, I tried to do my bit to make sure that I could propel that forward. I was also a Millennium campus network member.
Millennium campus was an international fellowship, where you have different people who are interested in community service, nation-building, and sustainable development goals and I was privileged to be one of the people that benefited from that program.
So it’s helped me going forward, the importance of community service, of volunteering, and just trying to make an impact generally.
I’d like to know if you have any hobbies apart from working hard and studying hard, what are the other things you like to do outside of reading?
I love watching movies, that’s what you are going to find me doing when I’m not doing anything else, that’s what I use to unwind.
So my hobbies, that’s top of the list. I love to watch movies and I love historicals, I do a lot of historical movies. Whatever is based in the medievals, that teaches me a little bit about history, you are going to find me watching that.
I love legal series because I am a lawyer, I also love medical series, and I am currently watching Dr house. So that is one of the things I like to do.
Aside from that, I love to visit new places and meet new people. I said I’m an indoor person but sometimes just dress up and go out, I love to do that and occasionally read
Okay. Just very briefly, tell us your two top favourite series that you like
Suits. Suits is my favourite series of all time and for the medical series, I think it would be The Good Doctor. I love The Good Doctor.
What advice do you have for the younger generation?
I am actually feeling very privileged now to be advising the younger generation because that’s me. I’m the one that they advise.
I would just say to those who are still undergraduates, just do your best. If you are going to do anything, you might as well do it well. If you go to my LinkedIn, you are going to see my LinkedIn banner, it says ‘‘Excellence is an attitude’’.
You can cultivate the attitude of excellence in everything and what excellence means is doing small things in a great way.
When you do small things you do it in a great way. You just don’t do things because you are just doing them, but you do things and you do them well. It’s the same thing with everything that happens in your life, beyond your academics, every other thing that you find yourself doing, do it well, be excellent.
Make sure that if you are going to be talked about, you are going to be talked about for positive things. You are going to be talked about for being an excellent person, being an excellent individual, being able to contribute.
Academically, I’ll say read your books, nothing more. People will ask me, what did you do, please what should I do? I’ll just tell them, just read your books, be focused. It sounds so cliche but it’s just what it is, it’s the good old “read your books”.
I’m sounding like my father right now because that was what I kept hearing and If I was gonna advise anyone academically, it would be that, be focused.
Shut out the noise, there is time for everything. It’s one of the things I’ve learnt in life. All those things you want to do, you are going to do them but for this stage that you are, keep your head in the game, stay focused.
If you set a goal for yourself, strive and work hard to achieve it and there’s nothing that you cannot do. Remember I said that you are the best you in the universe and it’s a huge opportunity, for every chance that you get, make sure that people see the best version of you.
Put your best self out there, be yourself, be your best self, be authentic but make sure that you are representing yourself very well.
So, I’d like you to tell us how you approach client relationships and communication and also give us an example of successful negotiation or settlement
So, I don’t practise right now, so I don’t deal with clients. Maybe when I get called to the bar then maybe I’ll be able to answer that. I don’t deal with clients legally but I do some other stuff that would entail me working for people and working for clients.
As a general rule, in any law firm that you go to at least, places that I’ve interned with, you’ll always see that being client-focused or client-centric is one of the core principles of a lot of these law firms and that’s because If you are rendering any kind of service, your client is really the currency, you want them to be satisfied.
For communication, you need to understand their needs, they need to understand that you are there to help them as their lawyer.
A successful lawyer or a successful law firm has to understand the needs of their client and work towards helping them fix those needs.
That will be about communication making sure that you are open with them. As a lawyer, you are already bound by confidence that influences any communication you would have with other people in regard to your client and all of that.
So when I practise, I’ll be able to tell you or tell anyone that cares to know more about that when I deal with clients legally’.
I’d like to get your opinion on this school of thought that thinks that lawyers are very cunning, they lie and go beyond any means to get what they need to get to help their clients, whether it be in court, whether it be properties, whether it be anything. So what’s your opinion on that?
Well, I’m just going to speak generally, as a lawyer, we have professional ethics.
Saying that lawyers are liars is a fallacy because first of all, that’s a hasty generalisation. Lawyers do not lie, lawyers argue, and lawyers defend their clients in court.
So being a good lawyer is really about knowing how to interpret the law to suit the arguments that you are making. That’s why when I see Lady Justicia, if you have ever been to a court, or to a faculty of law, you will see that there is a wrap around the eye because the law does not see.
With what you present, there is a scale on one hand so it’s going to be weighed, evidence will be weighed and then there is a sword on the other hand for punishment.
What lawyers do is to try to interpret the law in a way that’s going to suit their case and that’s what some people now call lying. I’m not going to lie that some lawyers are unethical and it applies to every single profession.
As lawyers, we are bound by the rules of professional conduct so they are rules that every lawyer that you see, if you ask them to tell you the rules, they know the rules because it’s a very ethical profession.
Logically, when it comes to argument, it’s a fallacy, you can’t say that. Lawyers don’t even take it seriously because we are the ones who studied it and we are the ones who know what is really happening, it’s difficult to explain some of these things.
The ‘’layman’’ is not going to understand that because you didn’t study law. You don’t know what is happening.
You are just seeing two people arguing and you think one person is lying and one person is saying the truth but the difference is that someone else is smart, intelligent and understands the law well enough to tweak it to suit his argument.
So you just see two people arguing, someone is saying A and the other is saying B, and you can’t say which one is correct.
The law is like whoever makes the best argument sometimes will win. That’s why there’s a judge to weigh these two things, look at everything and then give a judgement. So, lawyers are not liars.
For your final words, What do you have to tell our readers, audience or people who are watching this?
If you are aspiring to study law, the first thing I’ll tell you is to know why. Don’t go on to study law because you think it’s a huge course.
The first thing is to know why because that will sustain you in school. If you don’t have a good reason to study law, you will get frustrated.
If you are studying law because of your parents, you will get frustrated, you will really regret it. I know some people now that studied law and they were like, if I had known what I know now, I wouldn’t have studied law.
So you need to know your why first of all, have a good reason for wanting to pursue a career in law.
To do well academically, I already said you have to take it seriously, you have to put in the work, take studies very seriously, and attend lectures if that’s something that you know you need to understand.
Then study because you need to know. I’m not going to lie, the educational system is not the best right now and so sometimes you just find yourself studying to pass an exam not because you want to learn anything.
Go the extra mile. One of my bosses would say that if you want what no one else has done, you need to be willing to do what nobody else is willing to do. You need to go the extra mile. If people who are not serious are reading for two hours, you need to read for four.
I am sounding like a motivational speaker but that is it. Ask anybody who has accomplished something great, It takes sacrifice.
Sometimes you need to sacrifice sleep, sometimes you need to sacrifice that party, and sometimes you need to sacrifice one other thing.
