Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has highlighted the need for the production of more lawyers in the country.
This according to him is to make-up for the supply deficit in the public sector.
While applauding plans by the General Legal Council to expand the Ghana School of Law, he urged the Council to ensure standards in the training of lawyers.
Despite making a case for the more production of lawyers, while speaking to Citi News at the call to the bar of some 305 newly trained lawyers on Friday, Oppong Nkrumah said the standards of the profession must be maintained.
“I am one of those who believe that without compromising the standards, we need a lot more lawyers and so we need to find some middle ground that allows a lot more people to get access and to have an opportunity to study because we need a lot more practitioners in the system particularly in the public services for example. The Ministries, Departments and Agencies should get to that level where we have a lot of in-house counsel but that all means that very generally we need a lot more both in the public and private sector,” he said.
I won’t allow mass production of lawyers – Chief Justice
The Information Minister’s call comes on the back of Chief Justice, Justice Sophia Akuffo’s caution 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,” the Chief Justice said at the Bench, Bar and Faculty Conference in July 2019.
Ghana School of Law Mass failure
The Ghana School of Law continues to record mass examination failure.
In September 2019, results released from its entrance exams saw only a few candidates sailing through.
Of the nearly 1,820 prospective students, only 128 reportedly passed the entrance examination.
A notice at the school on Tuesday showed that more than 90 percent of those who sat for the entrance exam failed to obtain the requisite marks to secure admission.
This is not the first time such a high number of candidates had failed in the School of Law entrance.
Many have thus called for legal education to be opened up but it seems that is not going to happen any time soon.
