Government Seeks to Move Legal Training from Ghana School of Law to Accredited Universities.
The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Dr. Dominic Ayine, has introduced the Legal Education Bill, 2025, in Parliament. The legislation aims to transform professional legal training in Ghana by shifting responsibility from the sole authority of the Ghana School of Law to accredited universities.
Presenting the bill to the House, Dr. Ayine explained that the proposed law is designed to eliminate persistent challenges in legal education, most notably the monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law and the restrictive entrance examination system.
He told Parliament that the current entrance exam has created significant barriers, making it extremely difficult for many qualified law graduates including those with first-class honours from recognised universities to secure admission to the Ghana School of Law.
“What this bill seeks to achieve is the removal of that bottleneck the monopoly of the Ghana School of Law and the entrance examination process that has made entry virtually impossible, even for first class students,” Dr. Ayine stated.
The Attorney General emphasised that the bill establishes a robust accreditation framework to safeguard quality in legal education. He made it clear that not every institution currently offering LLB programmes will automatically qualify to provide professional legal training.
“We are putting in place an accreditation system to ensure that not every substandard or ‘mushroom’ LLB school can produce graduates eligible to sit the bar examination,” he said.
Under the reforms, only universities that meet rigorous accreditation standards will be authorised to offer the professional law practice course.
Dr. Ayine underscored that the overriding objective is to guarantee that law graduates receive professional training that is at least equivalent to and preferably superior to the standard experienced by previous generations of lawyers.
“We want to ensure that those who qualify as lawyers undergo training that matches or exceeds what we ourselves went through before being called to the Bar,” he added.
The bill also proposes replacing the current entrance examination with a new National Bar Examination. Under the reformed system, all law graduates who successfully complete their professional training at accredited universities will be required to sit this standardised national examination.
Dr. Ayine clarified that the National Bar Examination will be conducted by the Council for Legal Education, through its dedicated Bar Examination Committee.
According to the Attorney-General, these changes are intended to broaden access to professional legal education while preserving and where possible strengthening the high standards required of the legal profession in Ghana.
Editor:
Obiri-Yeboah
