23-year-old bar aspirant Faith Alayande fell from the roof of a four-storey hostel building at the Nigerian Law School’s Lagos Campus.

Alayande had been transferred from the Enugu Campus to Lagos for an externship. According to the police, a suicide note was later found by a relative and fellow student. In its official response, the Nigerian Law School confirmed that Alayande had “fallen,” expressed its condolences to her family, appealed for privacy and reiterated its commitment to the “safety, welfare, and wellbeing” of its students and staff.

Her death came just eight months after another tragedy involving a Nigerian Law School student. In December 2025, Ayomiposi Ojajuni, a graduate of Olabisi Onabanjo University, died after allegedly ingesting a poisonous substance. Ojajuni had reportedly been prevented from sitting for the Bar Final examinations at the Yola Campus over unanswered queries issued by the school.

These deaths cannot be dismissed as isolated tragedies. They raise uncomfortable questions about an institution where academic pressure, financial demands, disciplinary procedures and difficult living conditions have long been part of the student experience.

The Nigerian Law School is not simply another educational institution. It is the mandatory bridge between a university law degree and admission to the Nigerian Bar. Anyone seeking to practise law in Nigeria must pass through the system, meet its requirements and accept its rules. There is no alternative law school to transfer to if a student finds the environment unsafe, the workload excessive or a disciplinary decision unfair.

That makes the institution’s responsibility to its students particularly significant. An organisation with such control over the professional futures of young people should be held to an exceptionally high standard of care.

Instead, the culture surrounding Bar Part II has often been defined by endurance. Students are expected to absorb vast amounts of practical legal knowledge — including civil and criminal litigation, corporate law and property law — within a compressed period. The expectation that almost every part of the syllabus may be examined creates an environment in which even strong students can feel as though they are constantly falling behind.

Accounts of extremely long study days, intense competition and lives organised almost entirely around examinations are common among law students. Hard work is an unavoidable part of professional training, but there is a difference between demanding excellence and constructing an environment in which exhaustion becomes a measure of commitment.

The consequences extend beyond academic performance.

Students are navigating heavy workloads alongside financial pressure, uncertainty about their futures and the constant comparison that comes with a highly competitive professional environment. These pressures exist within a country where young people’s access to mental-health support is already severely limited by cost, stigma and a shortage of professionals.

The institution’s disciplinary structure can add another layer of vulnerability. The use of “queries” and other disciplinary measures can have consequences far beyond a reprimand. In Ojajuni’s case, reports that he was prevented from sitting the Bar Final examinations demonstrate how a disciplinary matter can potentially place an entire professional trajectory at risk.

Accountability and discipline are necessary in legal education. But discipline should not become synonymous with punishment, nor should a student’s access to a career be placed at disproportionate risk without transparent procedures and meaningful opportunities to respond.

None of this means that the Nigerian Law School is uniquely demanding. Legal education is notoriously stressful around the world, and professional examinations are rarely designed to be easy. The problem is not that aspiring lawyers are expected to work hard. The problem is what institutions provide in return for those demands.

A rigorous academic environment can still be humane. It can expect discipline while recognising when a student is in distress. It can maintain high standards while providing confidential counselling, adequate accommodation and fair disciplinary procedures. It can prepare people for the pressures of legal practice without treating psychological and physical exhaustion as evidence of professional seriousness.

The Nigerian Law School has students who have been asking for many of these protections for years. Every campus should have accessible and confidential counselling services, staffed by professionals capable of identifying acute distress and responding appropriately. Students should know exactly where to turn when they are struggling, without fearing that seeking help will damage their academic or professional prospects.

Its disciplinary procedures also deserve scrutiny. Students should have a clear opportunity to respond to allegations, decisions should be proportionate to the conduct involved, and disciplinary processes should not unnecessarily jeopardise a student’s ability to complete the examinations on which their careers depend.

Most importantly, the workload itself needs to be examined. The question should not be whether students can survive an exceptionally demanding few months, but whether the current model is actually the best way to prepare competent lawyers.

The legal profession has a role to play in asking these questions. The Body of Benchers, the Nigerian Bar Association and the National Assembly all have the institutional standing to push for an independent assessment of welfare conditions, accommodation, academic workload, disciplinary procedures and mental-health provision across Nigerian Law School campuses.

There is no contradiction between maintaining high professional standards and protecting the people expected to meet them. The deaths of Faith Alayande and Ayomiposi Ojajuni should therefore prompt more than condolences after the fact. They should compel a serious examination of the environment in which Nigerian law students are trained.

The Nigerian Law School has every right to demand discipline, competence and hard work from its students. It does not have the right to regard their wellbeing as an acceptable casualty of achieving those standards. A profession built around justice should not begin by teaching its future members that suffering is simply the price of entry.