Submissions

Author Guidelines

Authors are invited to make a submission to this journal. All submissions will be assessed by an editor to determine whether they meet the aims and scope of this journal. Those considered to be a good fit will be sent for peer review before determining whether they will be accepted or rejected.

Before making a submission, authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material included with the submission, such as photos, documents and datasets. All authors identified on the submission must consent to be identified as an author. Where appropriate, research should be approved by an appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the legal requirements of the study's country.

An editor may desk reject a submission if it does not meet minimum standards of quality. Before submitting, please ensure that the study design and research argument are structured and articulated properly. The title should be concise and the abstract should be able to stand on its own. This will increase the likelihood of reviewers agreeing to review the paper. When you're satisfied that your submission meets this standard, please follow the checklist below to prepare your submission.

Guidelines for Authors

1. Author Information

Author names and affiliations

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• If available, the ORCID of the author(s) should be provided.

Corresponding author

1. Article structure

Subject Category
Use the appropriate category (see listing below).

• Administrative Law
• Conflict and Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Constitutional Law
• Criminal Law (Including Criminology)
• Environmental Law and Policy
• Gender, Law and Development
• Human Rights Law
• International Humanitarian Law
• Law of Evidence
• Law, Society and Development
• Legal Methods
• Medical Law Ethics (including HIV/AIDS and the Law)
• Nigerian Legal System
• Public International Law (including all branches)
• Application of Computer to Legal Studies
• Commercial Law (Including Mercantile Law)
• Energy, Oil and Gas Law
• Equity and Trusts
• Family Law
• Intellectual and Industrial Property Law
• Jurisprudence and Legal Theory
• Land Law (including Property Law/Law of Real Property)
• Law of Banking
• Law of Business Associations (Company Law)
• Law of Contract
• Law of Insurance
• Law of Torts
• Legal Drafting and Conveyancing Law
• New Technologies and the Law (Cyber Law/Bioethics/Biotechnology)

Trial Advocacy and Law Clinic (including Clinical Legal Education)

Title Page

The tile page should reflect the details of the manuscript. It should be concise and informative.

Subsections

Subsections should be numbered using decima system of headings with no more than three levels. For example, introduction (1.0) section can have subsections 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc.

Abstract
It should contain 200 to 300 words. It should be concise and contain the following: purpose of the research, methods, the main results and major conclusions.

Graphical abstract
A graphical abstract is mandatory for this journal.

Keywords

Please provide a maximum of 5 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes. Use only abbreviations well established in the field of study.

Introduction, Methods, Results etc.

This should include the background study, with the aims and objectives of the work, Statement of the Problem, Research Methodology, Research Questions, Justification for the work, Literature Review, Organizational Layout, Discussion of Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations. 

Acknowledgements: Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Statements and Declarations: All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

Competing interest: Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Funding Sources: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. etc.

Appendices: Appendices should be submitted as supplementary information.

Text

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

References

Citation in text: Cite references in the text in alphabetical order first, and chronological order second. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Thompson 1990).
2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996).
3. This effect has been widely studied (Abbott 2002; Barakat et al. 1995a, b; Kelso and Smith 1990; Medvec et al. 1999, 2000).

Reference management software
Mendeley, etc.

Reference style.

Reference Style/Format: Authors may follow any of the following:

• Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) referencing style.
• Blue Book style (for US Law)
• Oxford Style Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA for UK Law)
• American Psychological Association (APA) Style Latest Edition (for interdisciplinary topics)

Please note that only one style should be used for a paper.

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Figures: Figure Lettering, Figure Numbering, Figure Captions, Figure Placement and Size

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions into your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). If illustrations are supplied with uppercase labeling, lowercase letters will still be used in the figure captions and citations.
• If an appendix appears in your article/chapter and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, "A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices (Electronic supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted separately from the text, if possible.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• Figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• The publisher reserves the right to reduce or enlarge figures.

Supplementary material:

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

After acceptance:

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript. Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript. In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Guide for authors

Articles to be submitted for publication in the journal must have:

A cover page indicating the name of the author(s), academic and professional qualifications, designation, affiliated institution, contact address, telephone number and email address of the author(s).

An abstract of not more than 250 words.

Full paper should ordinarily not exceed 8,000 words; double line spacing, typewritten in Time New Romans, on an A4 size paper. Exceptional, articles of more than 8,000 words maybe considered. 

The paper should be submitted in Microsoft Word format, in British English.

Suggestion of Reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.