The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dr. Dominic Ayine, has unveiled the Legal Education Bill, 2025, which seeks to reform professional legal training in Ghana by shifting the system from the Ghana School of Law to accredited universities.
Presenting the bill in Parliament, Dr. Ayine said the proposed law is aimed at removing long-standing bottlenecks in legal education, particularly the monopoly of the Ghana School of Law and the entrance examination system.
According to him, the current entrance exam has made it extremely difficult for many qualified law graduates, including those with first-class degrees from reputable universities, to gain admission to the Ghana School of Law.
“What this bill does is to clear the bottleneck, which is the monopoly of the Ghana School of Law and the so-called entrance exam that made it virtually impossible for even first-class students to gain entry,” he told the House.
Dr. Ayine explained that the bill introduces an accreditation system to ensure quality control in legal education. He stressed that not all institutions offering LLB programmes will be allowed to train students for the Bar.
“We are introducing an accreditation programme to make sure that it is not every mushroom LLB school that will produce lawyers who will go on to write the bar exam,” he said.
He noted that only accredited universities that meet strict training standards will be permitted to run the professional law practice course.
According to the Attorney-General, the goal is to ensure that law graduates receive training that is equal to or better than what past generations of lawyers received.
“We want to make sure that candidates go through training that is either equivalent to or better than what we went through before becoming lawyers,” he added.
Dr. Ayine further announced that the bill proposes the introduction of a National Bar Examination, which will replace the current entrance exam system.
Under the new system, law graduates who complete professional training at accredited universities will all sit for a standardized National Bar Examination.
He explained that the examination will be administered by the Council for Legal Education through its Bar Examination Committee.
The Attorney-General said the reforms are intended to expand access to legal education while maintaining high professional standards in the legal profession.
By: Jacob Aggrey
