Good morning, friends.
Nowadays, in Nigeria, it is increasingly becoming difficult for people to pay lawyers' professional fees especially in land transactions.In most cases, lawyers have had to battle to get paid just six or seven per cent of the value of the subject matter of the transaction in which they were engaged. In very miserable cases, some lawyers even take less than that.This is sad.

However, I don't find this ordeal of lawyers in land transactions as painful as the legal risks that their clients expose themselves to just because they want to avoid paying their lawyers much for properties they intend to acquire free from encumbrances.

The height of the risks is such that most clients that sought my service recently in land transactions only hired me to prepare land sale agreements for them when they had already parted with their hard-earned money only to discover that the land in question is not even on an approved lay-out.The implication of this is that the government had not approved the location of the land for any purpose it may have been bought for.So, if you bought a parcel of land from somebody with the intention of erecting a residential building on it, you may have bought a piece of land  only good for another purpose entirely on the government-approved lay-out of the area where that land is situate.If you still go ahead to put up a residential structure on the land, it becomes an illegal structure as far as the law and the government is concerned.

Thus, early engagement of your solicitor is a wise step to detect any booby traps on your path to becoming a landowner.When your counsel charges you ten per cent or more of the value of a property you intend to buy,do not think it is too much.No amount is too much to avert an embarrassment that can cost you your life in the future.Have a blessed day!