A private legal practitioner Adjei Baffour Awuah has described Parliament’s directive for the General Legal Council (GCL) to admit some 499 law school applicants as “much I do about nothing.”
Mr. Awuah said the directive as issued by Parliament has no legal backing and not compelling enough to allow the Ghana School of Law to admit the applicants.
Parliament on Friday October 29, 2021, passed a resolution directing the General Legal Council to compel the Ghana Law School to admit the 499 students who took the 2021 entrance exams and passed using the advertised marking scheme.
This is in response to a motion introduced by deputy minority whip Ahmed Ibrahim, refined by first deputy speaker and presiding officer Joseph Osei-Owusu, and repeated by Effutu MP and deputy majority leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin.
However, reacting to the directive Adjei Baffour Awuah said parliament has no standing in law to direct the General Legal Council (GLC) to admit the said students.
Speaking on Accra-based Asempa FM on Frida, October 29, 2021, Mr. Awuah noted that the action of Parliament has no bearing on GLC and the law school.
He explained that GLC is a creation of statute and not under the Parliamentary resolution.
“There’s nowhere in the world where everybody who passes his or her LLB examination goes to the law school,” he argued.
According to him, in England and Wales, every university offers an LLB course but only eight universities run the Bar courses.
“This is best practice to training for the Bar, the standards ought to be high,” he posited.
He said despite the level of development in England and Wales only a little over 1000 barristers are called to the Bar.
“I admit there is a problem but we should thread cautiously with reforms at the law school,” he cautioned.
