Former president of the KNUST Law Faculty, Evans Osei-Bonsu, has criticised some provisions of the Legal Education Bill, 2025.
The bill, which has been passed by Parliament, seeks to end the Ghana School of Law’s monopoly by allowing accredited universities to provide professional legal training.
In an interview with Citi News, Mr. Osei-Bonsu said the bill, in its current form, merely rebrands the entrance exam to the Ghana School of Law as a national bar exam without addressing key challenges.
“When you take the bill in its form, you are telling us that you are scraping away the entrance exams however the student will sit for a National Bar Exams after doing a law practice training. Remember the law practice training is nothing new anyway, it is just a rebranding of the internship at the Ghana School of Law. If you are scraping the entrance exams at Makola and then doing a National Bar Exams, it is the same threshold you are pushing further,” he said.
He also raised concerns about how student postings to law firms will be handled, as well as the fate of applicants who could not gain admission to the Ghana School of Law.
“We will need government to give us a clear communication as to the status of students currently in school, whether they are going to sit for this year’s entrance exams. If they know they are going to sit, then they can adequately prepare before the time. The second is the backlog that are home and those currently in school, what is the next line of action for them?
“From the memorandum, it suggests that the next leg for them is the Law Practice Training. Are they the ones going to look for their law firms or they will need to write to their various universities for the universities to apply to the law firms for them to intern with? If these questions are answered, it will give us better clarity,” he said.
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