NOAH BenShea, one of North America's most respected and popular poet-philosophers, was likely to have had Mrs. Olufunke Adekoya in mind when he, in his great quotes to inspire great teachers wrote: 'Discipline in its highest notion is not punishment or self-punishment. It is rather something seminal to the self. It is our foundation. It is our architecture. It gives us structure. It allows us to steer our energies and pull our wagon'.This is so because Mrs. Adekoya was an embodiment of all the discipline and virtues enunciated by BenShea, who for his insightful perspective on life is often referred to as the 'Guru's Guru' and a 'Zen Mark Twain'.As a young lady, Funke, as she is called by her admirers, chose the path of honour, preferring a life of discipline and contentment, hence, she has remained one of a few Nigerian lawyers that has refused to soil her hands in the quest for prominence and riches, even in the face of an ever-challenging legal practice, where many people will do anything for survival.Perhaps, Funke's chivalrous way of life may not have been unconnected with her upbringing and marriage, as she was not only raised in a lawyers' family, she was also married to a military officer, two professions that prime themselves on civility and discipline.Getting to discover this trait that made Mrs. Adekoya a toast among colleagues in the legal community was not difficult as what it required was just a close contact.Not only was she intelligent, her soft mien depicted even in her dressing, bespeaks of her simplicity, a rare quality among female lawyers of her caliber.A rare specie, that she is, Mrs. Adekoya treaded on a rather male-dominated legal profession and came out unscathed with a lot achievements to show for it.In court-room, Mrs. Adekoya's intelligence is not in doubt as she has, through her legal acumen and dexterity, contributed to the enrichment of nation's jurisprudence, which led to her elevation to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) in September 2001, the 5th woman to be so elevated.The Lady of Law as she is often called, has also chaired many committees in the legal community because of her organisational skills.Her candour is also known at the home-front where she was often referred to as Law and her husband, a retired military officer as Order, a wonderful combination anybody will envy.No wonder today, Mrs. Funke Adekoya is a partner and the pioneer managing partner at 'LEX, one of the largest full service commercial law firms in Lagos, Nigeria, where she heads the Dispute Resolution Practice Group and now serves as the Quality Control and Client Care Partner.The 15-member practice group provides legal advice and representation in all modes of dispute resolution for domestic and offshore clients and advises foreign counsel on matters of Nigerian law.She practices extensively both as an arbitrator and a litigator in the area of commercial and corporate law and business insolvency and re-organisation before the High Courts and appellate courts and has often been appointed as sole and co-arbitrator in arbitration proceedings.Her litigation based law firm merged with three other firms to form 'LEX in 2004.As head of Dispute Resolution at 'LEX, she continues to provide legal representation to companies and individuals in Nigeria and abroad either as counsel, co-counsel or Nigerian law expert in both international and domestic litigation and arbitration proceedings; and has appeared as an expert on Nigerian law issues in courts in Turkey, the UK and the United States.She has advised and participated in mediation proceedings.Mrs. Adekoya obtained a Second Class Upper degree in law from the then University of Ife, Ile-Ife, in 1974, graduating top of her class with three faculty prizes to her credit. After obtaining her professional legal qualifications from the Nigerian Law School in 1975 and completing the mandatory National Youth Service Corps year, where she commenced her career in private legal practice, she attended Harvard Law School, Boston, Massachusetts USA where she obtained her LLM in 1977.Apart from being a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Mrs. Adekoya is also a chartered arbitrator and currently the chairman of the Nigerian branch, as well as a member of the board of the newly-established Lagos Court of Arbitration. She is listed on the Energy Arbitrators List by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, is a member of the African Users' Council of the London Court of International Arbitration and the African representative on the Editorial Board of Arbitration News, the journal of the Arbitration Committee of the International Bar Association.She is a member of the IBA Task Force on Professional Conduct of Counsel in International Arbitration, as well as an active member of the Nigerian Bar Association. She is also a member of its National Executive Committee and the General Council of the Bar.Within the Nigerian Bar Association she has held the following positions: national treasurer: 1990/91 and re-elected for 1991/92; member, Body of Benchers since April 1999 and a Life Bencher from March 2007 and was the first vice president of the Nigerian Bar Association from 2002 to 2004, only the second woman to hold such office and chair, National Human Rights Committee.Mrs. Adekoya was the chairman, Stamp & Seal Committee, 2002/04, which resulted in the launch by Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, CJN, GCON of a stamp and practising seal for lawyers in Nigeria, as well as the Vice Chairman, Committee to Draft Bylaws for Sections for the Nigerian Bar Association in 2003 as a result of which the Bar Association established a Business Law Section and a Section on General Practice in 2004.She was also a member, NBA Law Reform Committee to review Legal Practitioners Act, 2003/4, which proposed a total overhaul of the Legal Practitioners' Act and the Chairman of the Section on Legal Practice of the Nigerian Bar Association 2008/10.Mrs. Adekoya was also the chairman, Conference Planning Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association and was responsible for the planning of the Lagos and Kaduna Annual Conferences in 2009 and 2010.She maintains an active interest in law firm practice management issues and at the international level, she is an Advisory Board Member of both the Law Firm Management Committee and the African Regional Forum of the International Bar Association (IBA).She is also an officer of the IBA's Bar Issues Commission and a member of its Policy Committee, which enables her represent the views of developing Bar associations on world issues; discuss legal trends and issues as they may affect the global legal profession and contribute to the formulation of global positions on matters of interest to Bar associations worldwide.She was also member of the Presidential Committee on Prison Decongestion and Reform inaugurated in 2003 by the then Federal Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Chief Akin Olujinmi (SAN), as well as the Chairman, Summit on the Reform of the Legal Profession hosted by the Nigerian Bar Association in March 2006, which was convened to address the declining standards of legal education and opportunity within the legal profession and propose solutions.Speaking on her motivation to study law, Mrs. Adekoya said she always wanted to be lawyer, as her father read law and retired as a magistrate in Lagos State, after working also as a magistrate in East Africa.She said: 'I am from the legal family. I have a sister, who read law the same time I did. We have always been surrounded by lawyers. That I think, is the reason. I am a lawyer, I just can't think of myself being anything else'.Mrs. Adekoya's approach towards the legal practice is also exceptional, as she does not consider any case as being higher than others.She said: 'I consider every case I handle as landmark because 'it is important to the client, whether it is ordinary recovering of possession, the man wants his property back as quickly as possible; whether it is a dispute over a will, either the beneficiary wants to get his inheritance or he wants to know what is rights are, where the client is concerned, every case is important. So to that extent, every case is a landmark case, you do your best and then you leave it to the judges to determine who is right or wrong', she added.As every Nigerian lawyer, Mrs. Adekoya also had her fair share of challenging moments in the legal practice. One of this, she said, was the state of the judiciary where you are not sure if you are putting your case across the judge properly or whether the judge has taken a position, or whether the judge is not fully conversant with the state of the law.She said of the challenge: 'It is challenging when you are arguing a case and the judge does not follow where you are going. Maybe because he does not have access to those books or those materials, or maybe, he has already taken a particular position. Those are the moments I found challenging and unfortunately, they are becoming more frequent.'Another thing I found challenging is just the delay in the court system. You go to court, you are ready for your matter, you have briefed your witnesses, sometimes, we have witnesses who are coming from abroad and then you get to the court, and the court is not sitting. Those are the things I found challenging', she added.Reminiscing on her early days as a young lawyer in the northern part of the country, Mrs. Adekoya recalled the amusement that attracts a female lawyer in that part of the country since it was then a rarity the society, especially in the North, where she started her practice seeing her as woman even appearing in the court.She said: 'There were fair amount of amusement. We are seen as funny characters, what is a woman doing in the court and also because we are in the North, where women at that time were not that prominent in coming out. Now, we have many female chief judges in the North.'It was not so then to find a situation where a client comes in and sees you as a woman and says 'no I am asking for the lawyer'. Then you say' I am the lawyer', he says 'no, no, it is not you that I want. My male lawyer, I want the big lawyer'. I think those are things that do not happen any more', she added.She was not also unmindful of an element of some sort of discrimination against women in the profession.According to her, it is no longer the question of what you know but sometimes, there are some perceptions that certain kind of cases are for women - divorce, maybe tenancy, what we call soft law, but the cases that involved a lot of money or having a lot of political repercussions, they think they are not for women.'How many women do you see handling elections petitions' But it is the same law that we have to interpret it. You find female judges sitting as tribunal members.'Those are some of the issues we found ourselves today. Certain areas of law seemed to be for men', she lamented.On the get-rich-quick attitude of some young lawyers, Mrs. Adekoya said they should see the legal practice as a vocation where their character is important and not just a business.According to her, it is only with commitment to hard work and perseverance that they can make the money and not the short cut that lawyers are getting involved in which is giving law a bad name and everybody is being looked at as a crooked. A lawyer is not to be trusted'.Apart from her busy schedules, Mrs. Adekoya still found time to attend parties, dancing, reading novels and occasionally watching television.Her married is blessed with two children, one of which is a lawyer.
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