Spending 9 years to train a lawyer doesn’t mean you produce quality lawyers – Kwaku Azar jabs GLC
US-based Ghanaian lawyer and scholar, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare (Kwaku Azar) has suggested that the “requirement that law graduates go to the School of Law have put us in a strait jacket that fosters inefficiency, restricts creativity, promotes waste, and reduces quality”.
Speaking on the admission of LLB students into the Ghana School of Law, the legal reforms activist questioned why “a graduate spends another 3 years to get the LLB, then 2 years at Makola, then pupillage”. While elsewhere all it takes is three years to ready graduates to take the licensing exam.
He indicated he’s working to restructure the LLB program to provide coverage of substantive and procedural law, legal analysis, reasoning, research and also provide multiple opportunities for graduates to acquire skills and demonstrate competence in litigation, negotiation, transactions, problem-solving, drafting, and ethics.
Kwaku Azar further stated in his post on Facebook that “graduates who get the 3-year LLB will automatically qualify to sit for the Ghanafuo Bar exam, which will be administered in one part, getting rid of the multi-level licensing examination”.
Read his full post below
A graduate spends another 3 years to get the LLB, then 2 years at Makola, then pupillage. Elsewhere all it takes is 3 years to ready graduates to take the licensing exam.
9+ years of tertiary and “professional” education does not mean we are training higher quality lawyers. It means we have a poorly structured legal education system.
Note that the 9+ years of tertiary education applies to the rare student who transitions immediately to Makola. Most students need 2nd, 3rd, sometimes the 4th world war just to get the opportunity to go to Makola.
Most of the LLB graduates are forced to terminate their career dreams on some archaic theory that Ghana Airways bankruptcy also terminated the dreams of kids who wanted to be pilots.
GOGO will restructure the LLB program to provide coverage of substantive and procedural law, legal analysis, reasoning and research.
The program will also provide multiple opportunities for graduates to acquire skills and demonstrate competence in litigation, negotiation, transactions, problem-solving, drafting, and ethics.
Graduates who get the 3-year LLB will automatically qualify to sit for the Ghanafuo Bar exam, which will be administered in one part, getting rid of the multi-level licensing examination.
The requirement that law graduates go to the School of Law have put us in a strait jacket that fosters inefficiency, restricts creativity, promotes waste, and reduces quality.
It is only Ghana LLB that does not include taking courses in evidence, procedural law, family law, advocacy, and ADR.
It is high level anansesem to suggest that Law Faculties cannot handle such courses so they must be taught only by some special teachers, using special methods, in a special environment outside the university where LLB holders can be crammed in an auditorium with poor ventilation!!
GOGO will reduce post graduate legal training from 5+ years to 3 years while increasing the quality.
#SALL is the cardinal sin of the 8th Parliament.
Da Yie!
By: Agaatorne Douglas Asaah | myactiveonline.com
