I had some academic sessions with law students in the UK, last year. In offering legal insights to commercial law, I took an approach that fascinated them. I prepared a detailed Service Level Agreement (SLA) and asked them to review and negotiate the terms.

The idea was simple. I had theorised the clauses in commercial contracts but this time, I wanted them to see how these clauses are negotiated in practical terms. They’d review, track changes and I’d brush it up. It improved their understanding and it was fun.

I tell law lecturers of private law every time. It is simply insufficient and painfully unprogressive to keep fabricating scenarios as the only measure of testing students’ knowledge and appreciation of contractual terms. They forget, rinse and repeat.

That method is only helpful to litigation, and not transactional practice which is even more widespread. In fact, it does not help students appreciate how contracts are formed in industry practices and how lawyers help clients avoid prescient liabilities.

If I were taught contracts review as an undergraduate, I would have been more confident the first time I did one as a lawyer.

Exposing students to reviewing and negotiating contracts gives life to what they read. They don’t see contracts only from the angle of disputes.

I can teach you misrepresentations, implied terms, reps & warranties, capacity, illegality and elements of validity of a contract but not until you review and negotiate a contract, you may not know how to check for these elements within fine prints. So what’s the point?

You may also not know how to utilize them to protect your client. This is what transactional law practice is all about.

It’s painful how we have many corporate and commercial law enthusiasts but no proper foundation; too many chiefs, not enough Indians.

Instead of setting 5 law questions asking students to write extensively on tenuous elements of a contract, how about you set them in groups, teach them how to draft simple contracts, review and negotiate them, then test them on same? This is what lawyers do in practice.

We waste too much time in school learning what we cannot enliven, monetize or put to any utilitarian use. In my limited experience, I know that students are more motivated to learn when there’s innovation and creativity in what and how they learn.

Barring the peculiar Nigerian issues reflective in the indolence and shabbiness that chews our educational system, we will have very solid students if schools rewarded curiosity more than compliance; validated innovation more than convention.