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HIGH COURT OF THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, ABUJA. PROCEDURAL STEPS
TOP TEN NIGERIAN LAW WEBSITES
Technology is making a big difference in the Nigerian legal industry – in how its intelligence is researched, its processes satisfied, its services delivered and its documents or instruments accessed. Leading the charge is internet-based technology which has witnessed a host of LOCAL players within the past one decade joining a few who pioneered that path between 2000 – 2009.
According to statistics from Alexa-com, independent global calibrator of website ranking based on traffic and active engagements, a Nigerian website is the 2nd most visited/Googled law website in Africa – and first in West Africa. At least, two independent websites – out of the over 30 devoted to Nigerian legal information online – have become permanent fixtures in the coveted club of the top 200,000 globally in terms of traffic. Curiously, none of the groundbreaking giants in the print segment of Nigeria’s law publishing circuit –including the revered Nigerian Weekly Law Report, NWLR, Weekly Law Report, WLR, etc – were part of the top 20 most visited Nigerian law websites.
Instructively, the top ten positions (in terms of traffic, content and engagements) are dominated by non-subscription based websites with only LawPavilion –at No. 4 – making the cut. Passionate technology enthusiasts and young social entrepreneurs with background in law – instead of established legal professionals – feature prominently as founders or lead strategists of the top ten law websites in Nigeria with at least one woman social entrepreneur making the top two.
THE LIST (FROM 10TH TO 1ST]
| Website | Traffic/Content Rank (29/03/2019) | Maximum Traffic rank (Global) | Traffic Trend | Features | ||
| Global | National | |||||
| 11.
|
**nigerianlawguru.com
|
1,043,824
|
18,772
|
±700,000
|
Downwards
|
Nigerian Law Guru is one of the pioneer online projects dedicated to the Nigerian legal information space. Its ambition lies in the robust mandate it sets for itself by projecting to be clearing house for legal articles, case law digests in select areas of the law, legislations (including the Constitution, Laws of the Federation, Rules of Court, and Statutes) as well as forms and precedents. It also was a pioneer in the provision of online access to contact details connected with legal institutions especially judicial and regulatory centers as well as vital lists of players in the legal services space.
|
| 10. | allfwlr.com | 936,725 | 8,750 | ±650,000 | Upwards* | This is the online platform of the All Federation Weekly Law Reports – one of the few print publishers of law reports that has successful made the transition to online reporting. It provides both subscription based and direct-downloads for a fee documents covering cases |
| 9. | nigerianbar.org.ng | 629,015 | 5,470 | ±629,015 | Upwards* | This is the website of the Nigerian Bar Association. While its brand name secures for it a significant search hits on internet search engines, the poor content profile of website (including the continuing inability to provide a verification platform for Nigerian lawyers licensed to practice in Nigeria) continues to detract from its overall usefulness. |
| 8. | lawyard.ng | 536,278 | 4,543 | ±500,000 | Upwards* | Lawyard, established by some young legal practitioners provides full online access to laws of the federation of Nigeria, selected news and reports connected with the Nigerian legal industry. |
| 7. | nlipw.com | 517,986 | 4,424 | ±370,000 | Upwards* | This is the online platform of center of Nigerian Law Intellectual Property Watch, a niche website devoted to reports, cases, legislations and other intelligence connected with Intellectual property law in Nigeria primarily. Its very well designed pages and rich but non-copyable full-online-access contents have made it a leader on intellectual property information searches connected with Nigeria. Its intellectual property cases registry (covering the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Courts and special IP tribunals) as well as highlights of current IP cases have made the website a go-to-place for intellectual property intelligence. |
| 6. | placng.org | 279,619 | 2,251 | Current | Upwards | This is the online website of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Center, PLACN, a leading policy nonprofit in Nigeria and better known for its facilitation fo the “The Situation Room” which is a key Observer Group of Nigerian elections. This website is an authoritative platform for information and infographics relating to the Nigerian legislature. Directly, it provides a real-time and historical monitor for activities of the National Assembly, grants access to laws of the federation of Nigeria and policy reports connected to governance and legislation in Nigeria. Through placbillstrack.org – a connected website, it focuses on the legislative process providing analytics on the sponsorship, number, type and progress of bills before both chambers of the national Assembly. |
| 5. | LawPadi.com | 269,151 | 2,734 | ±265,000 | Upwards | This is a legal information and advisory designed to offer insights in print, by phone, email and other means – either for free or for stipulated fees. Founded by Babatunde Ibidapo-Obe in July 2015, the site is perhaps notable for maintaining a positive profile in its user-profile over the course of about three years. |
| 4. | Lawpavilion
[lawpavilionplus.com, lawpavilionpersonal.com and lawpavilion.com] |
279,051 | 2,369 | ±270,000 | Downwards | This is the main website of the leading provider of subscription-based Nigerian legal information online (it has other websites including lawpavilionpersonal.com). Lawpavilion was launched in 2007 to provide a groundbreaking online alternative to the established law reports in Nigeria complete with its own citations. Over the span of a decade, the site has leveraged advances in technology to position itself as a brand name in Nigeria’s legal industry – bar, Bench and Corporate Nigeria. From judgments, it has since enlarged its offerings to include legislations, legal analytics softwares, devices, etc. The web center was founded by Ope Olugasa, a Social Entrepreneur, passionate about strengthening the Justice System through introduction of innovative solutions to the obstacles faced by the industry. |
| 3. | nigeria-law.org | 266,427 | 2,1472 | ±240,000 | Upwards* | This is one of the groundbreaking pioneers of online law media in Nigeria – one of the few that has not gone under. Founded by the International Centre for Nigerian Law (ICFNL), under the leadership of Egbuna Obata, a Physicist and lawyer, its aim is to modernise Nigerian law by making it responsive to the real requirements of doing justice. Its major way of doing that is by making laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and select laws of some States available to a worldwide audience. The site thus designed to act as guide to and resource for persons all over the world who do or want to do business with Nigeria or are interested in the Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: statutes, rules of courts, guidelines, practice directions, etc |
| 2. | thenigerialawyer.com | 184,153 | 1,762 | This site’s strength lies in its very high “daily time on site” (37:21 minutes) and daily pageviews per visitor (7). It also has the highest organic traffic as only about 10% of its traffic is routed through Google – which another sense is indicative of the generic nature of its contents as they are basically trending stories connected with the Nigerian legal space sourced mainly from other established news organisation. So, in a sense, it serves as an aggregator of law connected news for the younger/online community of the Nigerian legal services industry. The blog was founded by Kate Unini, a young legal practitioner whose passion and energy has helped to get the site to its commanding position today. It is one of just two websites in Nigeria to break into the global top 200,000 and the national top 2000. | ||
| 1. | lawnigeria.com | 175,585 | 1,104 | ±170,000 | Upwards* | lawnigeria.com is the second most resourced/visited law site in Africa and first in West Africa. The site commands the highest presence/results on Google searches, a testament to its superior substantive content outlay relating to Nigerian law. It is, thus, on course towards becoming the first Nigerian law site to make into the national top 1000.
It also boasts a modest but illustrious site-linking profile including such picky platforms as the worldbank.org, loc.gov, Columbia.edu, etc. It provides full and free access to a very wide range of legal documents online including laws/treaties of the federation and states of Nigeria, cases in over 80 areas of law, rules of courts and practice directions of the courts/tribunals of records of Nigeria and indexes covering the vast majority of regulations and guidelines of Nigerian regulatory agencies. It also provides legal, policy and business intelligence. It is founded by Sam Eleanya, whose training in law and extensive exposure in Nigeria’s policy and media spaces [as former Managing Editor of the BusinessEye Magazine and the TheBigIssue Lagos (a UN/INSP facilitated publication] has helped to secure the discipline that has gotten lawnigeria.com to its present perch atop Nigeria’s online publishing space. |
| *Ranking trending upwards after trending downwards significantly
**Formerly included among the top ten until we discovered the omission of LawPadi which metrics placed it in No. 5 pushing the iconic law guru outside of the top 10 |
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Other independent websites with some sizable online traffic as to register on the global calibrator, Alexa.com are presented below in order of (global (G) and National (N) rank:
The ranking of government sponsored law sector connected websites (on 29th March, 2019) also runs a very wide spectrum. For instance, at least three such websites – cac.gov.ng (8,996/55) (website of the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria), cbn.gov.ng (66,971/451) (website of the Central Bank of Nigeria), and Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS [firs.gov.ng (72,379/458)] record traffic in the top 100,000 globally (cac.gov.ng actually makes the top 10,000! Club in online traffic). Those three represented law connected agencies of government which have found working strategies to leverage internet enabled technology to advance their service delivery. Other law connected public sector websites and their online traffic quotient are:
[This is a special development report of lawnigeria.com based strictly on neutral data available in the public at alexa.com, global calibrator of website traffics and analytics]
HIGH COURT OF THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, ABUJA. PROCEDURAL STEPS
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