Ghana’s Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine, has mounted a robust defense of sweeping reforms to the country’s legal education system, rejecting claims that the changes will flood the profession with underqualified lawyers.
In an exclusive interview with A1 Radio, Dr. Ayine described the reforms as a necessary intervention to dismantle long-standing structural barriers that have, for years, prevented thousands of law graduates from advancing into professional legal practice.
“This is about breaking a bottleneck that has denied opportunity to many qualified Ghanaians,” he said.
At the heart of the reform is the dismantling of what the Attorney General calls a “monopoly” held by the Ghana School of Law. For decades, the institution has served as the sole gateway to the legal profession, admitting only a limited number of students each year despite a growing pool of LLB graduates from universities across the country.
Dr. Ayine revealed that at one point, nearly 7,000 law graduates were unable to progress due to capacity constraints at the professional level.
“Let them take the bar exam and fail if they must, but at least give them the opportunity,” he argued.
Under the new framework, accredited universities offering LLB programmes will also be required to run a one-year Law Practice Course. This course will focus on the practical aspects of legal training, including courtroom procedures, drafting legal documents, and litigation skills—areas critics say were previously underemphasized.
Graduates who successfully complete this stage will then be eligible to sit for a national bar examination focused strictly on practical competencies.
“We are not going back to test theory again. We are testing whether you can actually practice law,” Dr. Ayine explained.
To address concerns about declining standards, the Attorney General emphasized that the reforms will be backed by a stringent accreditation regime. Not all institutions currently offering LLB degrees will qualify to run the Law Practice Course or prepare students for the bar.
The accreditation process will be jointly overseen by the Council for Legal Education in collaboration with the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission.
“If you do not meet the criteria, you will not be accredited. And if you are not accredited, your students cannot proceed to the bar,” he stated.
According to him, this market-driven accountability will compel institutions to improve standards or risk losing relevance.
One of the most persistent criticisms of the reform is the fear that expanding access will dilute the quality of legal professionals. Dr. Ayine dismissed this as a “fear of the unknown,” insisting that similar systems have been successfully implemented elsewhere.
Drawing on his own experience as a legal academic, he argued that professional competence is developed more in practice than in the classroom. “Law is a vocation. You learn more when you are practicing than when you are in school,” he said. He further assured the public that the government has no intention of compromising the integrity of the legal profession. “We will not train half-baked lawyers. The system we are building is even more rigorous than before.”
The Attorney General disclosed that preliminary assessments of law faculties across the country are already underway, led by the Director of Legal Education, Raymond Atuguba.
This evaluation process, he noted, will ensure that only institutions with the required infrastructure, faculty strength, and training capacity are approved to participate in the new system.
For thousands of aspiring lawyers who have long been locked out of the system, the changes represent a long-awaited opportunity.
For critics, however, the true test will lie in implementation.
As Dr. Ayine sees it, the reform is not just about education, it is about fairness.
“We are creating a system where every qualified Ghanaian has a fair shot at becoming a lawyer,” he said. “That is the essence of justice.”
A1 Radio | 101.1 MHz | Samuel Adagom | Bolgatanga
