On Friday, October 10, 2025, the legal landscape of Ghana welcomed 824 new attorneys at the 62nd Call to the Bar. This ceremony, enrolling them as Solicitors, Barristers, and members of the Ghana Bar Association, is more than a formality. It has evolved into a national event, complete with legendary traffic jams in Accra and a complete takeover of our social and traditional media feeds.
Year after year, I hear the same question from friends, public and social media commentators outside the legal fraternity: “It’s just another profession, so why all the fuss?” I will hazard a response to this question, but before that, let me provide some context.
Laying the Grounds
I am a Chartered Accountant (ACCA-UK and ICAG), and hold a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, an MBA in Finance, and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB). I am currently in my final year of the Professional Law Course at the Ghana School of Law. As you can tell, I have survived the rigours of multiple academic and professional gauntlets. I can state with authority: the “fuss” is entirely warranted. I will explain.
Let’s start with the journey. Without equivocation, almost everybody can make an attempt at studying the Law in this country or many others. In fact, you may not need to be the brightest person to be able to make that attempt in Ghana. Unlike many other professions for which you may require a very high level of prior academic credentials to commence the academic and professional training, all one may require to enter most Law Faculties in Ghana as a degree holder is Second Class Lower division degree or better, although entry requirements at the undergraduate level may be a more stringent one, requiring very excellent High School grades.
The real challenge begins after you make that fateful decision to start. This is where the SUFFERING begins, a term I use with the full weight of its meaning. It is a universal experience, regardless of your faith, intellect, relations or resilience.
The Suffering of the Mind
Law is a beast of endless details with thousands of principles and rules. For a single legal principle, you must master the principle itself, the conditions for its application, its exceptions, and every available defence. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You must then support this with a deep understanding of constitutional provisions, statutes, and, most dauntingly, case law.
Legal precedents are the bedrock of the profession, and for one principle, you might need to digest a dozen complex cases. Imagine cracking open a legal text only to find it’s nearly 600 pages, like the 2012 Election Petition case. Now, imagine having to do that for six different cases… for a single principle, a condition precedent, an exception or a defence. In fact, for the Law of Contracts, it is jokingly said that for every sneeze or blink, there is a case that backs it. The voluminous reading is non-negotiable and utterly relentless. You must read!
What makes it further troubling is that, for a settled principle, the decision of a Court in a future case, or the repeal of a particular statute or constitutional provision, can undo that position of the Law; hence, a student must unlearn the previous position and relearn the new one. In essence, you become a Student through life. Sorry for you if the position of the Law changes during the pendency of your stay as a Student.
The Suffering of Life
Abusuafo, your social life becomes a casualty. Family gatherings are missed, friends complain of your absence, your participation in social groups is significantly curtailed, and romantic relationships are tested to their limits, with some even breaking under the strain. If you have a job, balancing it with this workload is a Herculean task.
The journey itself is long and traumatising. The shortest path to the Bar is five gruelling years: three years LLB (four years if an undergraduate programme) and two Years Professional Law Course. But that’s just the theory. Completing an LLB in Ghana is no mean feat. In a Law Faculty in this country this year, of about 30 students in a class that started the Programme, fewer than 15 of them graduated. This is only the first level of trouble.
Gaining entry into the Ghana School of Law (affectionately known as ‘Makola’) for the Professional Law Course is a battle of its own. I have personal knowledge of persons who wrote the Entrance exams nine years straight before getting to enter Makola. Indeed, for the year 2024 that saw about 4,000 LLB holders write the Ghana School of Law entrance exams, only 1,441 passed and gained admission to the Professional Law Course. For context, this is the highest intake into the Ghana School of Law in a year in the entire history of the School as the sole institution for administering the Professional Law Course. So, this was supposed to be very good news, a situation where about 64% failed. Deep that!
Now, once you’re in, the real design for frustration reveals itself. Currently, for a Part 1 (Year 1) student, your day runs from 7 am to 8 pm, while Part 2 students run from 7 am to 4 pm (and that is if there are no Advocacy practice (Moot Court) sessions scheduled. This is for two days a week. For another two days, one is required to have a mandatory internship, either in a Court, a Legal department or a Law firm. And whether in class, at your internship, or away from both, you’re expected to read tons of material to simply keep up. It’s a marathon with no clear finish line. I am aware of the existence of individuals who entered Makola in 2017 and are still students today. Getting in is no guarantee of becoming a lawyer.
The Suffering of the Pocket
Friends, now let’s talk money! Law school is unreasonably expensive. We’re talking school fees, SRC dues, exam fees, and books, and I mean so many books. The financial haemorrhage continues right from application and entrance exams, through to the Call ceremony itself.
The cruel irony? You are required to be essentially UNEMPLOYED throughout this process, especially at Makola. As part of the admission process, if you are employed, you will be required to provide evidence of your resignation or Study Leave from your employers. So, make it make sense; You are expected to fund this repetitive financial assault without a stable income? Going broke is not a possibility; it’s a rite of passage.
The Suffering of the Family
Let’s be real, Law school doesn’t just happen to the student; it happens to everyone who loves them. The student might be the one in the trenches, but their family and friends are the home front, feeling the shockwaves every single day.
For the student who’s also a partner or a parent, it’s a special kind of guilt. You become a ghost in your own home. Your kid’s school and other social activities? Missed. A simple, quiet dinner with your spouse? Your body is at the table, but your brain is still in a lecture hall. The partner left behind has to pick up all the slack, becoming the sole homework helper, the only bedtime storyteller, and the manager of all household chaos. It’s a lonely job, and resentment can quietly build on both sides.
The emotional toll is a shared burden. When a student fails a paper or has to repeat a year, it’s not just their failure; it’s a dark cloud that settles over the whole house. The entire family endures the silent treatments, the stress-eating, and the agonising wait for exam results that feels like a collective nightmare. They’re the cheerleaders for a player who is too exhausted to even wave back.
And again, we can’t ignore the money. Law school is wildly expensive, and it’s rarely just the student’s wallet that takes the hit. It is parents digging deep into their retirement savings. It’s a spouse using their hard-earned meagre resources to cover the endless stream of fees and books. It’s the family vacation that gets cancelled for the third year in a row. It’s the kids having to forgo certain presents that would have added more meaning to their childhood. The financial support isn’t just a transaction; it’s a massive, stressful investment that the entire family makes, often while holding their breath.
So, when a lawyer finally gets called to the Bar, that celebration isn’t just theirs. It’s for the parent who paid the fees, the partner who held down the fort, the kids who learned to be quiet when daddy or mummy was studying, the Church that consistently fasted and prayed for his success. It’s a victory for the whole village that survived the war. I have had the privilege of MCing graduation parties and Call to the Bar parties, and I can assure you that the joy of families during the Call to the Bar parties has no match.
Conclusion
Wrapping up, when you experience what you may call “unwarranted noise,” the traffic, the media frenzy, and the litter of posts during a Call to the Bar, understand this: it is not a slight against other professions. Not at all. It is a collective sigh of relief, a triumphant roar after surviving a unique calibre of SUFFERING. It is the celebration of those who have been broken, mentally, socially, and financially, and have pieced themselves back together to cross the finish line.
Therefore, the next time you see a new lawyer or their relations celebrating, allow them their flowers. They have not just passed exams; they have survived an ordeal. They’ve navigated a path so demanding that their ultimate professional qualification isn’t just a license to practice law; it’s a well-earned “bar-rista” of resilience, serving a strong brew of success after years of being ground down. Instead of complaining, “Big them up!!”
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The Author is a Finance Professional, Event MC/Conference Moderator, Broadcaster and a Student of the Law
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