…as Mahama’s NDC Pushes for Groundbreaking Reform
By Leo Nelson
The days of Ghana’s elite-controlled legal education system appear numbered, as the government, under President John Dramani Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC), moves to introduce a sweeping Legal Education Bill.
This highly anticipated legislation aims to democratize access to the legal profession, fulfilling a key campaign promise and dismantling what critics have long slammed as an opaque and corrupt monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law (GSL).
Majority Chief Whip and South Dayi MP, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, is leading the charge, vowing to push the bill through Parliament under a certificate of urgency.
His passion for the reform stems from years of fierce advocacy against a system he describes as having become “acrimonious, contentious and eventually corrupted” since 2018.
Dafeamekpor didn’t hold back in his scathing critique of the GSL, currently headquartered in Makola, Accra. For decades, the institution has maintained an iron grip on professional legal training, with an admissions process allegedly riddled with malpractice.
The MP cited shocking revelations from the General Legal Council’s own disciplinary committee, which uncovered that at least eleven students were admitted through the “back door” – without even sitting the mandatory entrance examinations.
“My own information suggests the number was over 33,” Dafeamekpor declared, “but for the record, to minimise the impact, they said 11. What became the fate of those 11 students who were admitted back door? We are yet to know. But we shall uncover.”
The proposed bill is set to shatter Makola’s longstanding monopoly. Under the new regime, all accredited universities offering Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degrees will also be empowered to provide professional legal training.
This means the Ghana School of Law will no longer be the sole gateway to the bar, but rather one of several institutions competing to train Ghana’s future legal minds.
“Let every faculty accredited to run the academic LLB programs be accredited or licensed to train their own lawyers,” Dafeamekpor asserted. “Already, the faculties are calling themselves law schools anyway. What becomes of a law school when you can’t train lawyers?”
Beyond breaking the monopoly, the bill aims to decentralize legal education and significantly improve accessibility. Bar examinations, currently a bottleneck, will be conducted twice a year – in January and June. This crucial change promises greater flexibility for law graduates across the country.
“You pass the bar, you are called, the Ghana School of Law… will also have to compete,” Dafeamekpor emphasized.
Professional legal training itself will also become more flexible, with a potential duration of one to two years depending on the student’s pace and course load. “If somebody is so focused, the person should be able to complete it in a year.
Dafeamekpor also tackled a common misconception, stressing that not all individuals called to the bar aspire to be courtroom practitioners. Many pursue corporate law and other fields where a legal mind is invaluable.
He argued that expanding access to legal education is vital for building robust legal capacity within public and corporate institutions nationwide.
“You enter a lot of assemblies in this country, and you see we need lawyers—not necessarily practitioners but people with legal minds to guide you,” the South Dayi MP highlighted.
This legislative push is a direct fulfillment of a significant pledge made by the NDC and John Mahama during the 2024 general elections. It was a cornerstone of the party’s manifesto, designed to address widespread grievances about the exclusionary and rigid nature of Ghana’s legal education.
For years, the Ghana School of Law’s dominance has faced intense scrutiny from academics, students, and civil society organizations.
Large numbers of qualified LLB graduates have been consistently denied admission, often due to entrance exams that critics argue are designed more to exclude than to genuinely assess competence. Previous calls for reform largely fell on deaf ears.
However, with the Legal Education Bill, this era of opacity and exclusion appears to be drawing to a close. The bill signifies a broader political commitment to dismantling elite-controlled gatekeeping in critical professions and expanding access to quality education.
Parliament is expected to prioritize and approve the bill during its second meeting of the first session of the ninth Parliament. If passed, it will not only usher in a new dawn for Ghanaian legal education but also deliver on a bold promise to remove barriers, promote equity, and truly democratize opportunities within the legal field.