- The Legal Education Bill: A Panacea or a Partial Remedy?
By Ustarz Jibreel Saad Esq. – Head of Legal , Ghana Civil Aviation Authority
To the public and aspiring members of the Bar,
I bring you compliments from my chambers and add my voice to the ongoing discourse surrounding the recently enacted Legal Education Bill. Its long-awaited passage by Parliament has, unsurprisingly, generated varied reactions across the legal profession. As a practitioner deeply interested in the future of legal training in this country, I believe it is important to contribute to this critical national conversation.
The key question arising from this development is straightforward, yet profound: Does the new law provide a complete solution to the longstanding challenges confronting legal education in Ghana?
The answer, in my respectful view, is no. While the Bill represents a significant and commendable intervention, it is not a panacea. At best, it is a partial remedy to a much deeper structural problem.
The crisis in legal education has long been clear. The Ghana School of Law, in its present state, has lacked the capacity to absorb the growing number of qualified applicants. This institutional limitation has produced two major consequences: a persistent backlog of students seeking admission and a high failure rate in the entrance examination process.
These twin challenges, limited space and weak academic outcomes, lie at the heart of the problem. Yet, over the years, efforts at reform have focused disproportionately on the issue of access, particularly the question of physical capacity, without equal attention being paid to the quality of legal education being delivered at the undergraduate level.
It is against this background that the Legal Education Bill must be carefully assessed. Undoubtedly, the reform offers an opportunity to expand access, decentralise legal training, and reduce the pressure on the Ghana School of Law. In that sense, it addresses the question of space. But it does not, by itself, guarantee an improvement in the quality of legal education. Indeed, if the issue of quality is not tackled alongside access, the reform may merely widen the pipeline without strengthening what flows through it.
At the centre of this quality question is the matter of faculty. Legal education cannot thrive without a committed and competent academic workforce. It is widely acknowledged, including by students themselves, that the legal academy in Ghana suffers from a shortage of dedicated lecturers and scholars. Many institutions, especially some of the newer or less-established ones, struggle to maintain substantive teaching staff in core areas of law. In some cases, academic presence appears stronger on accreditation documents than in the classroom.
The burden of legal scholarship and teaching continues to rest on a relatively small number of lawyers who have chosen the demanding path of academia, while the larger body of practitioners understandably remains focused on private practice and litigation. This reality has serious implications for the standard of instruction delivered to students.
Expanding student intake without making deliberate investments in academic capacity is therefore a risky proposition. It is akin to enlarging a structure whose foundation remains weak. The likely consequence is that we may succeed in producing more law graduates without necessarily producing better-trained ones. In that event, the bottleneck would not disappear; it would simply shift from admission into law school to qualification at the Bar.
The Legal Education Bill should therefore be seen for what it is: an important and necessary reform, but not a complete cure. It is a step in the right direction, particularly in addressing the persistent issue of limited access. However, unless it is accompanied by broader measures aimed at improving teaching standards, strengthening accreditation enforcement, and incentivising academic careers in law, it will not fully resolve the crisis.
True reform in legal education requires more than opening doors. It requires ensuring that those who walk through those doors receive rigorous, credible, and high-quality training. That demands qualified lecturers, stronger institutional oversight, and sustained commitment to academic excellence across all accredited institutions.
In conclusion, the Legal Education Bill is not a panacea. It is a partial remedy, and a potentially useful one. But its success will depend on whether it forms part of a wider, deliberate, and sustained effort to raise both access and quality within legal education. Without that balance, we may solve the problem of space only to deepen the problem of substance.
