Adaeze & Co. · About
A small firm,
on purpose.
We take a limited number of matters at a time so that the person you meet is the person doing the work. This page sets out how that operates in practice, including how fees are agreed before anything starts.
History
Firm history
The firm was registered in 2014 and began as a two-lawyer practice in Ibadan handling commercial drafting and land transactions for small businesses in Oyo State. Most of that early work came from referrals by accountants, which shaped how the firm still works: a matter is explained in writing, in language the client's accountant can act on.
A Lagos office followed, opened for clients whose transactions crossed into Lagos State land registry and the federal courts. The two offices share one file system, so a matter begun in Ibadan can be handled in Lagos without the client repeating themselves.
[Client to supply: the firm's own account of its history, in its own words. The two paragraphs above are a structural placeholder written to the spec's shape — dates, offices and origins must be confirmed or replaced before launch.]
How we work
How we work
How a matter starts
An enquiry through the form or by telephone, then a short first conversation at no charge to establish what the matter is. If we can act, you receive a letter of engagement setting out the scope, the fee basis and the name of the lawyer handling it. Nothing billable begins before you have that letter and have agreed to it.
Who handles it
One lawyer owns the matter from start to finish and is named in the engagement letter. A second lawyer reads the substantive documents before they leave the office. You are not passed between departments, and you are told in advance if the person handling it changes.
How often you hear from us
A written update after every material step — a filing, a court date, a response from the other side — and at least once a month while a matter is live, even when the update is that nothing has moved. If a deadline is at risk, you hear about it before it passes, not after.
How fees are agreed
The fee basis is fixed in the engagement letter: fixed fee for defined work, hourly otherwise, with an estimate for each stage. Disbursements are separate and itemised. If the scope changes enough to affect the estimate, we write to you before doing the additional work, not after billing for it.
Fees
Fees approach
Defined work is quoted as a fixed fee: a standard contract, a title investigation on a clean title, a set of company secretarial filings. Work whose length cannot be known in advance — negotiation, litigation, a disputed title — is billed hourly against an estimate given at the outset, with the estimate reviewed at each stage.
Disbursements are billed separately at cost: filing and court fees, stamp duty, registry search fees, courier and travel. They are itemised on every invoice with the receipt reference.
[Client to supply: the firm's approved hourly rate or rate band, and confirmation that this fee approach matches current practice.] No price table appears on this site because none has been supplied and approved.
Registration
Registered address and jurisdictions
Registered address
[Client to supply: registered office address, as it appears on the firm's letterhead.]
Practising jurisdictions
Nigeria. The firm's lawyers are enrolled at the Supreme Court of Nigeria and practise in the courts of Oyo State and Lagos State, and before the Federal High Court and the National Industrial Court.
[Client to supply: confirmation of the jurisdictions and court levels the firm actually appears in.]
Regulation
The firm is regulated by the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee under the Legal Practitioners Act. [Client to supply: firm registration number, if it wishes it published.]