Market Intelligence

Legal research is one of the essential activities of legal practice. As legal practitioners use knowledge, facts, and evidence in practice, thorough research yields the accurate information they utilise in advising clients, drafting agreements, preparing arguments, and performing many other tasks. This article provides a practical guide to how paralegals or legal support professionals in Nigeria can carry out efficient and reliable legal research under the supervision of counsel.

In the first week of October 2026, the world’s highest-grossing law firm announced that it will stop keeping score in public. Kirkland & Ellis informed The American Lawyer by letter that 2026 would be the last year it supplies revenue and profit figures to the press. Public reporting, the firm wrote, “does not provide meaningful value to our clients,” and the rankings it feeds “could incentivize quantitative metrics over qualitative strengths.” Justin Henry, Kirkland Goes Dark on Reporting Revenue and Profits to Media, Bloomberg L. (Oct. 7, 2026).

The FARA Conference convened last Thursday, September 24th, in Washington, D.C., bringing together legal practitioners, scholars, and others who encounter the Foreign Agents Registration Act for a full day devoted to the statute.

The Department of Justice signaled in its recently released 2026 Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions that it may soon issue final rules in a yearslong effort to rewrite its FARA regulations. The Department solicited initial comments in late 2021, issued draft rules in late 2024, and closed public comment on the draft rules in early 2025.

A new strategic partnership has been launched to guide Seen, Heard, Diverted, a three-year programme working with neurodivergent young people to help shape how the justice system responds to them.

For legal case managers, that distinction matters. Much of the job can involve client communication, case updates, document coordination, deadline tracking, and keeping matters moving between attorneys and support staff. Those responsibilities do not always require someone to sit in the same office as the attorney.