The Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Inusah Fuseini wants the Ghana School of Law to be stripped of the autonomy it currently has on passing students to become professional lawyers.
According to him, such a reform will address the annual record of mass failures in the school’s entrance exams.
Every year, more than 1000 students, most of whom are graduates from law faculties of various universities write entrance exams for an opportunity to study at the Ghana School of Law before becoming lawyers.
But the results of the entrance exam show mass failures with only 7% passing the 2019 exams.
According to Inusah Fuseini, the fact that the Ghana Law School is the only institution that can produce professional lawyers and regulates admissions into the school means that there exists an entry barrier that will ensure mass failures each year.
“When you have only one venue for the purpose of training and that same avenue is there for regulating the standards and admission, that constitutes an entry barrier to the profession,” he said.
He argued that given that the School of Law has very limited resources, it will do all it can to restrict the number of people admitted even if majority pass the entrance exams.
He said the School of Law must be allowed to operate as a regular law faculty that trains prospective lawyers and prepares them for the required professional exam which should be administered by the General Legal Council.
He said, “Ghana School of Law need not exist as a regulator and a provider of service. Then General Legal Council which has a supervisory jurisdiction over the Ghana Law School ought to remain a regulator and hive off Ghana School of Law from its jurisdiction so that it becomes a player in the field like all other players. And the University of Ghana for instance can start the training of lawyers from the first year a person enters the faculty until the person is qualified to write the prescribed professional examination to become a lawyer.”
“[If this is done] this whole system of only 7% pass in examination written by 1,280 students will no longer exist,” he added.
Many have raised concerns about the challenges of the country’s legal education with some persons calling for a thorough probe into circumstances leading to such volume of failures annually.
A journalist and the convener for the coalition of reformation of legal education in Ghana, Ken Kuranchie earlier this year filed a suit in court over the same matter.
Among the reliefs he was seeking was a scrapping of the entrance exam.
Ken Kuranchie and other persons vocally advocated for reforms in the legal education system to enable more people to get access to legal education.
Meanwhile, the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, in a recent public address suggested that opening it up to more people will compromise the quality of legal education.
Sophia Akuffo earlier this year cautioned the General Legal Council to be wary of the mass number of students admitted into the Ghana School of Law.
“Those of you lawyers and those of your lecturers who are busy advocating free scale, mass admissions into the professional law course, and mass production of lawyers, to be careful what you wish for. So long as I have anything to do with it, it won’t happen. Just like you can’t mass produce doctors and surgeons, Ghanaians must not have mass-produced lawyers imposed on them,” she said.
