Professor Gbolahan Elias studied law at Magdalen College and Merton College, Oxford University, England graduating with a 1st Class Bachelor of Arts (Law) degree (1980) and a 1st Class Bachelor of Civil Laws degree (1983) respectively. He also obtained a Master of Arts degree (1987) as well as a Doctor of Philosophy (Law) degree (1989) from the Oxford University. He was admitted to the Nigerian Bar in 1981, the New York State Bar in 1990 and New York Federal Bar in 1991.
He has been a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators since 2004 and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation since 2011. In 2005, he was conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) the equivalent of Queen's Counsel in England.
He became a Fellow of the Energy Institute in 2015. In 2016, he became the first-ever African member of the International Association of Defense Counsel, and he is the present Chairman of the Lagos State Law Reform Commission.
Professor Elias began his legal career as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a New York law firm, and thereafter, at Kehinde Sofola (SAN) & Co., until 1994 when he started G. Elias & Co., a leading business law firm in Nigeria where he is still a partner. His legal practice is wide-ranging and spans complex large-scale “bet-your-company” product liability litigation, major energy sector arbitrations, seminal mergers and acquisitions transactions in the consumer products sector, innovative oil-and-gas project financings, and the largest equity and debt public offerings ever in the Nigerian capital markets.
He is a widely-published author in areas such as property law, corporate law, shipping law, procedural law, and administrative law. He has also delivered numerous presentations and seminar papers on many aspects of Nigerian business law. He has taught at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (1995 – 1997), the Lagos Business School (1998 – 2001), and the University of Pretoria, South Africa (2017). He is a part-time professor at Babcock University, Ilishan, Ogun State.
