The Member of Parliament for North Dayi, Jocelyn Tetteh, has joined calls for the decentralization of the training of lawyers in Ghana.
Ms. Tetteh argued that reforms that would liberalize the training of lawyers are needed to ease the pressure on the Ghana Law School, which is currently the only centre for training lawyers.
The current training regime limits the intake into the Ghana Law School to under 500 of the about-2000 LLB graduates annually.
The MP, who is also a member of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Parliament, and a law student, said such reforms will ultimately bolster the legal delivery system in Ghana.
She noted that some of these concerns stemmed from the Legal Aid scheme which has only 21 lawyers serving on it.
“We all do degrees in various universities. You can’t tell me because I went to the University of Cape Coast and the quality of my degree is not compared to the quality coming from Zenith or Legon… If the standard is given saying your students must get up to this grade to be able to be called to the bar and the person gets the grade, how is the quality going to decrease or something?” she asked.
Ms. Tetteh noted that only 470 students are admitted annually to the Ghana Law School, an improvement on the recent number of about 250 LLB graduates.
However “the ceiling they have given is not because it is backed by any law… [but] inadequate resources and lack of infrastructure is the reason. This means whether one passes or not, one is not guaranteed admissions,” Ms. Tetteh added.
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana