University of Lagos (UNILAG) Law students must embrace data analysis and artificial intelligence, this was the conclusion of participants at the end of a workshop held in the institution.
Speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the participants said that the skills are essential for the future of legal practice in Nigeria.
The LSS Secretariat Workshop 1.0 was held earlier on Saturday by UNILAG’s Law Students’ Society and Data Science Nigeria.
According to them, courts and firms now handle huge volumes of information. Interpreting data and spotting patterns is becoming core to legal work.
“Data analysis has become an essential skill because legal practice relies on large volumes of information,” AI Engineer, Fowo Adeniji, said.
She added data analysis shifts lawyers from guesswork to evidence. “It helps lawyers conduct better research, and cases would be managed more efficiently,” she said.
Adeniji also explained the link between the two fields: “Data analysis provides insight and structured information. AI can now use those insights to make predictions or automate tasks.”
Participants were trained in Microsoft Excel, key functions, and data visualisation. They worked with real-world datasets to build practical legal reporting skills.
Adeniji debunked a common myth, saying: “One of the biggest misconceptions is that data analysis is only for programmers or mathematicians.
“Meanwhile, data analysis requires organising, interpreting and drawing conclusions. Lawyers need these skills, not advanced coding.”
Biomedical engineering student, Mayowa Titilola, said legal work had always depended on pattern recognition across judgments and disputes.
“Legal practice has always been about pattern recognition; we just used to do it manually, one case at a time,” Titilola noted.
She said technology now scales that work. “Now that same skill can be scaled with tools that read thousands of documents in minutes,” she added.
Titilola stressed that AI would support, not replace, lawyers. “Data analysis doesn’t replace legal judgment; it strengthens it,” she said.
She listed practical uses to include how lawyers could spot how judges rule, how long disputes take, and which arguments succeed across hundreds of cases.
Workshop activities included spreadsheets for structured legal data. Students also used simple AI-assisted builders to create applications without coding from scratch.
They learned vector search too. The tool lets users query large document sets in plain language instead of exact keyword matches.
“By the end, each participant had built a working legal search tool over real Nigerian legal texts,” Titilola said.
According to her, graduates can adapt the tools for due diligence, contract review, or internal research in firms and chambers.
Addressing another misconception, Titilola said: “Many people wrongly believed data analysis required becoming a programmer or mathematician. It doesn’t.
“Most of what’s useful to a lawyer is asking sharper questions of data that already exists.”
Looking ahead, Titilola predicted major change that would see Nigeria’s courts and firms adopting evidence-based case triaging.
She added that legal research would shift to AI-assisted tools, saying these would be grounded in verified case law databases.
She noted rising demand as firms now want professionals who understand both law and technology.
Final-year student, Idowu Adamo, also noted that almost every sector currently runs on data, including law.
“Even in law, lawyers deal with a lot of information like court judgments, contracts and client records. If you know how to analyse data, you can find useful information faster, make better decisions and work more efficiently,” he said.
Adamo said the skill was no longer just for tech people as it helped lawyers organise cases and reduced reliance on guesswork.
He explained how AI and data connect. “AI is only as good as the data it’s given. Data analysis helps clean, organise and understand that data first.
“If an AI tool is helping with legal research or summarising cases, it’s because good data has been analysed first,” he said.
He said analysing court data could help by identifying backlogs, improve case management, and expand access to justice.
Adamo also warned on ethics, stressing that future lawyers must understand privacy, cybersecurity and data protection. “AI outputs should always be verified,” he said.
Highlighting new career paths, he said: “You can work in legal technology, compliance, data privacy, cybersecurity, AI governance or even legal consulting.
“Technology isn’t here to replace lawyers. It’s here to make lawyers more effective. The earlier you start learning it, the better prepared you’ll be for the future.”
(NAN)
