Section 15 Legal Practitioners Act

Section 15 of Legal Practitioners Act 1975 is about Scales of charges. It is under ‘Remuneration of Practitioners‘ of the sections of the Act. It provides as follows:

1. There shall be a committee, to be called the Legal Practitioners Remuneration Committee, which shall consist of- a the Attorney-General of the Federation, who shall be the chairman of the committee; b the Attorneys-General of the States; and c the president of the Association and three other members of the Association.

2. The quorum of the committee shall be three, of whom one shall be the chairman of the Committee or some other member of the Committee nominated by him to act as chairman of the committee on the occasion in question.

3. The committee shall have power to make orders regulating generally the charges of legal practitioners and, without prejudice to the generality of that power, any such order may include provision as to all or any of the following matters, that is to say-

a. the maximum charges which may be made in respect of any transaction or activity of a description specified by the order;
b. the ascertainment of the charges appropriate for any transaction or activity by reference to such considerations as may be so specified;
c. the taking by practitioners of security for the payment of their charges and the allowance of interest with respect to the security; and d agreements between practitioners and clients with respect to charges.

4. The Committee shall not make an order under this section unless they have served a copy of the proposed order on the president of the association and have considered any representations in writing made to the committee by the association within the period of three months beginning with the date of service of the copy; and if the President of the Association on within twenty days of the day on which an order under this section comes into force, signifies that the order be annulled it shall, except in relation to anything previously done by virtue of the order, cease to have effect on the day next following the date of the resolution and be deemed never to have had effect.

5. Until the first order made in pursuance of this section comes into force, nothing in this section shall be construed as affecting the law in force in any part of Nigeria with respect to the remuneration of legal practitioners.