“Stubborn” Chief Justice Faces Lawyers’ Protest …on stance to Mass-Fail Law Students

Whatsup News has gathered that some groups within the legal fraternity-including aggrieved law students-, will on Monday, October 7, 2019 mount a massive protest against the General Legal Council and the Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo.

This rare protest has become necessary following the adamant stance taken by the Chief Justice who insists on her controversial resolve not to change the existing systems at the Ghana School of Law (GSL) that has continuously caused mass failure of aspiring lawyers.

Chief Justice Akufo who has said she will personally ensure that lawyers are not produced en masse at the GLC, issued her latest war cry while passing out 305 new lawyers in Accra on today, Friday October 4, 2019.

“The General Legal Council (GLC) continues in its quest to assure the people of this great republic the excellence in professional legal education and production of quality lawyers that they so well and dearly deserve. The position of the General Legal Council (GLC) remains that admission to the Ghana School of Law for professional legal education requires that successful candidates obtain a minimum rank of 50% in an entrance exam administered by the Independent Examination Committee,” she said.

Every year, more than 1000 students,-most of whom are graduates from law faculties of various universities -write entrance exams for an opportunity to study at the Ghana School of Law before becoming lawyers, but over 90% of these prospective lawyers are frustrated in a draconian system that ensures mass failure in passing out from the Law school.

Civil society groups have vehemently criticised the General Legal Council responsible for the structure of the prohibitive GSL

In 2019, less than 7% of the approximately 1000 prospective lawyers were failed and prevented from becoming full-fledged lawyers.

Critics have  earlier prescribed the problem of mass failure as a result of inadequate  resources, but signals from the General Legal Council shows that the mass exclusion is a deliberate policy. A civil society group calling itself Taxpayers Union (TU) has described the policy as “nonsensical” and has hinted on joining in the protests on Monday.

“The Chief Justice-who is paid with our tax contributions-reasoning for not allowing “mass production” of lawyers is fundamentally flawed,” TU stated in a release made available to Whatsup News today.

 “We need to decouple the education and the regulation. Let them [General Legal Council] stay on a competition basis, train them [LLB students], and when the students have their degree, they apply to take a common bar exam administered by a qualified bar examiners and anyone who passes that becomes a lawyer,” a Ghanaian legal practitioner, Professor Kwaku Asare, popularly known as Prof. Azar suggested recently.