(1) the Regulation seeks to commandeer Parliament to rubber stamp the General Legal Council’s (Council) prior illegal actions;

(2) the Council’s prior illegal actions have resulted in extraordinary injustice and occasioned uncommon hardship to over 3,000 students;

(3) the proposed Regulation does not provide any relief for the victims of the Council’s illegal actions;

(4) the proposed Regulation, if passed, will conflict with the Supreme Court’s order that the mechanism for 2018 admissions to the Ghana School of Law should be in place by December 22, 2017;

(5) the Council has a duty, under the Legal Profession Act, to provide opportunities for LLB degree holders to qualify as lawyers;

(6) the proposed Regulation seeks to put entrance “tariffs,” unrelated to technical competence, on qualified students;

(7) the entrance tariffs are at variance with the Council’s duty to provide opportunities for law students to qualify as lawyers;

(8) the entrance tariffs effectively implement a quota system to ration out space at the Ghana School of Law at a time when there has been a significant growth in the number of Law Faculties and students interested in entering the Law Profession;

(9) the Law Faculties are alternative places of instruction that can accommodate the growth in the number of students qualified to pursue the professional component of the legal education; and,

(10) Parliament should not allow itself to be used as a vessel for legitimizing the ultra vires actions of administrative bodies or otherwise be seen as partaking in any scheme that perpetuates injustice and robs citizens of their substantive legitimate expectations.

LI 1296 regulates the admission of law students to the School of Law. It emplaces a bifurcated legal education system with an entry point at the Law Faculties and an exit point at the School of Law. To enter the School of law, students must pass various courses specified in the Regulation, acquire the LLB, and be of good behavior.

The LI, thus, provides an objective, incorruptible, progressive and automatic admission requirements for students.

2 The bifurcated legal education system did not occur by happenstance. It was a product of considerable research done by the International Advisory Committee to examine legal education in Ghana and the Denning Committee, appointed by the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, to examine legal education in Africa.

1 In the words of the Denning Committee, “in some parts of the world a university degree in law is considered by itself a qualification to practice. We do not take this view. … After a man has taken his degree at the university, he should have a period of one year’s practical training at a school of law where he can be taught such things as the drawing of pleadings, trust accounts and bookkeeping, practical conveyancing, etiquette and professional conduct.”

Since 2012, the Council has acted ultra vires by imposing its own arbitrary admission rules, culminating in the Supreme Court holding, on June 22, 2017 that the Council’s imposition of entrance examination and interview requirements for admission to the School of Law violates Articles 11(7), 297(d), 23, 296(a), and 296(b) of the 1992 Constitution.

The Court also affirmed that LLB degree holders from the various Faculties automatically qualify for admission to the Ghana School of Law or other alternative places of instructions specified by the Council. Lastly, the Court declared that the Council’s disqualification of persons, who have so qualified, violates the constitutional provisions hereinbefore listed.

Given the acrimony, confusion and ultimately the Supreme Court’s repudiation of these extralegal admission policies, one would have expected the Council to activate a broad consultation process to seek a way forward that is (i) progressive, (ii) curative of the injustice that its illegal actions had produced, and (iii) reflective of the underlying increase in the population of people interested in legal education.

Alas, almost 7 months after the ruling, the Council has not provided any plans for making whole the over 3,000 students that its illegal actions have wronged. Nor has the Council met with or consulted with the victims, relevant stakeholders or plaintiff in the action.

Rather, it has laid the Legal Profession Regulation, 2017 in Parliament, with the primary, if not the sole, purpose of procuring legislative blessing of the same illegal actions that have wrought the extraordinary injustice and done needless violence to the bifurcated legal education system. Parliament 1 The International Advisory Committee comprised of Professors L. C. B. Gower (London School of Economics), Sir Zelman Cowen (University of Melbourne) and Arthur Sutherland (Harvard Law School). 3 must deny this invitation to wrongdoing, in much the same way as the Supreme Court did, and demand justice for the Council’s victims.

Moreover, Parliament must demand an explanation for the sudden change in the legal education model. The Council’s prior unlawful admission policies have resulted in uncommon hardship and exceptional injustice to over 3,000 students. The proper course of action in such an instance is to seek ways to undo the injustice to the victims, not pass a regulation to legitimize the unlawful administrative act.

The power of administrative bodies and public authorities to change policy must be and is constrained by the legal duty to be fair, candid, reasonable and just. If an administrative body has distinctly promised to confer a benefit to a specific person or group who perform certain actions, then that promise creates a substantive expectation, which binds the administrative body to keep its promise. Over 3,000 students have a legitimate substantive expectation that the Council will give them an opportunity to pursue their professional education.

They have incurred significant financial, cognitive and emotional resources, all in reliance of the promise of LI 1296. Parliament must exercise its oversight authority over the Council and order it to provide reasonable relief to the victims of its injustice, not allow it to evade responsibility, thumb its nose at its victims and the rule of law, or otherwise legitimize its unlawful actions.

The Supreme Court has ordered the Council to put in place by December 22, 2017, the law that will govern the admission of students to the School of Law in 2018. As at the deadline, LI 1296 remains the only law on admission to the School of Law. Consistent with LI 1296, the Council must be compelled to provide alternative places of actions for all qualified students to pursue their professional education in 2018.

The Legal Profession Regulations, 2017 seeks to contravene this order and its passage will attempt to vary the order, thereby potentially putting Parliament on a collision course with the Supreme Court and creating further needless and costly litigation.

The proposed entrance examination will not be a test of technical competence. In fact, none of the entrance examinations that the Council has organized since 2012 has tested technical competence. LI 1296 incorporates adequate tests of competence by requiring anyone seeking to be a lawyer to take and pass courses in Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Property, Equity, etc.

An entrance examination that covers these courses, as a condition precedent to enter the School, does not add any value to legal education and cannot be a better diagnostic tool than passing over 4 10 courses in the Law Faculty. Rather, as we have learnt since 2012, these entrance examinations are just a device to allow the Council to effectuate a quota system to ration space at the Ghana School of Law.

This is why, to date, the Council cannot and does not specify an a priori pass mark. Au contraire, each year, the Council announces an arbitrary number that allows it to choose only about 1/3 of the qualified students. I contend that this quota system is grossly arbitrary and unfair and counter to the enabling Act and the overriding national interest. I further contend that the practice of denying qualified persons who are willing to pay their tuition and eager to further their professional education is a profoundly bad practice that augur ill for the country and should not be allowed to continue in Ghana, where there is an acute shortage of legal professionals.

Parliament must take notice that the Ghana School of Law enrolled a paltry 252 new lawyers in 2017. Other African countries at the same level of development and with smaller or same size population call lawyers in the thousands.

The Legal Profession Act imposes a duty on the Council to establish a system of legal education, which affords qualified students opportunities to read and to obtain practical experience in the law and to qualify as lawyers.

The Council is duty-bound to make arrangements for legal education in such manner as it thinks fit and, in particular, either through a school of law or through any educational institution. The Act does not, however, allow the Council to shirk its responsibility to make such arrangements and use that shirking as a basis for imposing a quota system. The use of the quota system is not inevitable and arises only because the Council continues to hold on to the model of the School of Law, as conceived in 1958, where all LLB degree holders converge to a central location (or locations) to pursue professional courses.

This model is a 1958 solution to offering legal education to 10 law students in a newly emerged independent country, with 1 Law Faculty, that is entirely anachronistic in a matured country with 10 Law Faculties. In today’s world of distance learning and assorted electronic learning platforms, it is entirely unnecessary for students to converge at a centralized location or any central locations to study evidence, procedure, taxation, legal accountancy, interpretation, alternative dispute resolutions, conveyancing, family, company, labor, banking and insurance law.

The Ghana School of Law has no comparative advantage in teaching these courses. Nor are these courses so unique that they cannot be taught at the 10 Law Faculties. In fact, some of the courses are currently taught at the Law Faculties creating needless repetition and redundancy. 5 It is time to collapse the faux and unnecessary distinction between the academic and professional law courses. I propose that law students be required to take all courses at their Law Faculties after which they can apply to take the Bar examination, administered by a Board of Examiners.

The Bar examination should be administered twice a year and opened to anyone showing that they have an LLB and have taken 90 credits of Law Courses. No self-respecting Parliament will allow an administrative body to legalize and normalize its unlawful admission policies that have occasioned uncommon inconvenience, needless hardship and miscarried justice for thousands of qualified citizens. The Sierra Leone Parliament, faced with a similar set of circumstances, sided with justice and their constituents to reject a similarly defective regulation. We expect no less from our Parliament.

For similar reasons, Ghanaian lawyers, trained in other common law jurisdictions, seeking to be admitted to the Ghanaian Bar must be required to take and pass the Bar examination but not be compelled to attend classes for one year. Nor should they be made to pay exorbitant fees unrelated to the cost of administering the examination.

Finally, I call on Parliament to amend the Legal Profession ACT 32 (1960) to dissolve the GLC as currently constituted and to create a 21st century Council for Legal Education that is responsible for accrediting Law Faculties, administering Bar examinations, and setting and enforcing ethical and quality control standards for qualification and practice as a lawyer. For all of the forgoing reasons, I pray that the Legislative Instrument be withdrawn from Parliament immediately.

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Author: Prof. Kwaku Azar

The post Why Parliament should withdraw LI for legal education [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

According to him, the stringent admission procedures will help the school do away with students who have not had adequate training from their respective law faculties in tertiary institutions.

[contextly_sidebar id=”GMty3XYApndLKG2z25MhN1FPuDbaX0LV”]“As legal educators, our mandate is to give access and also ensure quality, so we are not going to allow anybody to just come and say he is going to do law when we are not sure you have had enough training at the LLB level… There are some products from the faculties who do not meet the standard required to do law,” Nana Osei Bonsu said in a Citi News interview.

Some law students and legal practitioners are resisting the passage of the Legal Profession Regulations 2017 currently before Parliament which seeks to scrutinize entry to the law school.

The concerned groups argue that, the LI, if implemented, will prevent otherwise qualified graduates from pursuing the law program.

The proposed LI among other things, states that the General Legal Council will conduct an entrance exam for the admission of students to the school, and conduct interviews for all applicants who pass the Ghana School of Law Entrance Examination.

The General Legal Council laid the Regulations in Parliament in mid-December 2017, in response to a Supreme Court order for a clear admission procedure into the Ghana School of Law, and call to the Ghana Bar.

Protest from students

A group calling itself the Concerned Law Students had earlier submitted a petition to Parliament against the new LI, describing it as a deliberate attempt by the GLC to frustrate them, something they considered a violation of their rights.

Ken Addor Donkor, the leader of the group, said the proposed LI was an attempt to kill the dreams of law students.

Exams, interviews barred for Law School

When the Supreme Court declared the interviews unconstitutional, it said the requirements are in violation of the Legislative Instrument 1296, which gives direction for the mode of admission.

The Justices in delivering their judgment, also indicated that their order should not take retrospective effect, but should be implemented in six months, when admissions for the 2018 academic year begin.

The plaintiff, Professor Kwaku Asare, a United States-based Ghanaian lawyer, went to court in 2015, challenging the legality of the modes of admission used by the Ghana School of Law.

According to him, the number of people who were admitted into the Ghana School of Law was woefully small considering the number of people who possessed LLB.

The Ghana Law School has been criticized for being overly rigid considering that it serves 12 schools providing LLB degrees.

The current training regime limits the intake into the Ghana Law School to under 500 of the about-2000 LLB graduates annually.

In his suit, Professor Kwaku Asare prayed for a declaration that GLC’s imposition of entrance examination and interview requirements for the Professional Law Course violates Articles ll (7) 297 (d) 23, 296 (a) (b) and 18 (2) of the 1992 Constitution.

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By: Sixtus Dong-Ullo/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Rigorous admission process to ensure quality – Law School Registrar appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The petition, which was filed by the Association of Law Students had asked the President to impress upon Parliament to vote against the regulation.

[contextly_sidebar id=”tFiLuom3qhaIf6B7sig2ZN6F1tug5nUm”]The General Legal Council laid the Regulations in Parliament in mid-December 2017, in response to a Supreme Court order for a clear admission procedure into the Ghana School of Law, and call to the Ghana Bar.

The proposed LI in question, among other things, states that the General Legal Council will conduct an entrance exam for the admission of students to the school, and conduct interviews for all applicants who pass the Ghana School of Law Entrance Examination.

The LI is expected to become Law in February, 2018.

But the law students maintain that the document, if passed in its current form, will only restrict access to legal education.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, Ben Abadallah, said Parliament will hold final deliberations on the petition on Friday.

“The committee met them today [Tuesday], and we have not taken any definitive decision on their petition. The Committee will meet on Thursday with the subsidiary legislative committee before we can take a definitive decision on their petition.”

He further stated that, Parliament will withdraw the regulation if the Association’s petition is supported by two thirds majority of Members of Parliament.

“It’s either to press upon the General Legal Council to withdraw the regulation failing which it is their prayer that two thirds majority of Parliament will have the regulations annulled. If by the end of the day Parliament is persuaded by their submissions contained in the petition, then we will report to the plenary to have the regulations annulled.”

Protest from students

A group calling itself the Concerned Law Students had earlier submitted a petition to Parliament against the new LI, describing it as a deliberate attempt by the GLC to frustrate them, something they considered a violation of their rights.

Ken Addor Donkor, the leader of the group, said the proposed LI was an attempt to kill the dreams of law students.

Exams, interviews barred for Law School

When the Supreme Court declared the interviews unconstitutional, it said the requirements are in violation of the Legislative Instrument 1296, which gives direction for the mode of admission.

The Justices in delivering their judgment, also indicated that their order should not take retrospective effect, but should be implemented in six months, when admissions for the 2018 academic year begin.

The plaintiff, Professor Kwaku Asare, a United States-based Ghanaian lawyer, went to court in 2015, challenging the legality of the modes of admission used by the Ghana School of Law.

According to him, the number of people who were admitted into the Ghana School of Law was woefully small considering the number of people who possessed LLB.

The Ghana Law School has been criticized for being overly rigid considering that it serves 12 schools providing LLB degrees.

The current training regime limits the intake into the Ghana Law School to under 500 of the about-2000 LLB graduates annually.

In his suit, Professor Kwaku Asare prayed for a declaration that GLC’s imposition of entrance examination and interview requirements for the Professional Law Course violates Articles ll (7) 297 (d) 23, 296 (a) (b) and 18 (2) of the 1992 Constitution.

Bentil kicks against regulation 

Vice President of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, had said that if the controversial LI is passed, it will place a restriction on legal education in the country.

Kofi Bentil, who spoke to Citi News before a meeting between law students and Parliament’s Subsidiary Legislation Committee, indicated that the proposals by the General Legal Council were against an earlier decision by the Supreme Court.

“We are of the view that the action taken by the General Legal Council constricts the parameters for legal education instead of expanding them, and they have very negative implications on everything… There can never be an overproduction of lawyers, we need lawyers in every area aspect of society, so we don’t know why we would make choices that will effectively constrict legal education…. I don’t think that was intended in the Supreme Court order given to the General Legal Council,” he said.

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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Parliament to decide on petition against LI for legal education on Thursday appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.