The founder of MountCrest University College and former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Mr. Kwaku Ansa-Asare, has issued a strong caution to the Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine, against abolishing the Ghana School of Law (GSL) as part of the proposed reforms to legal education.
Speaking at the 8th congregation of MountCrest University College, where 137 students graduated from the Faculty of Law and Health Sciences, Mr. Ansa-Asare underscored the historical significance of the institution and urged its preservation.
The Ghana School of Law, established in 1958 by Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa.
It has historically served as the sole institution for professional legal training, and its abolition, according to Mr. Ansa-Asare, would be a monumental mistake.
A proposed Legal Education Bill, currently under consideration, aims to decentralise professional legal training by allowing accredited law faculties to offer a one-year Bar Practice Programme.
However, this could lead to the GSL being phased out, a prospect that Mr. Ansa-Asare describes as a “very sad day”.
Mr. Ansa-Asare, who served as Director of the GSL from 2002 to 2013, drew on his experience working with legal education systems in other West African countries, including The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.
He emphasised that Ghana’s system has long been a model for the region. “A Ghanaian lawyer without a Ghana School of Law is no lawyer,” he stated, adding that the institution was “very dear to the heart of Kwame Nkrumah.”
Instead of abolishing it, Mr. Ansa-Asare proposed converting the GSL into a postgraduate institution.
He suggested it could offer advanced degrees such as an LL.M. in Legal Practice, with specialisations in areas like evidence, civil procedure, and family law.
This would allow students to “earn something higher” in addition to their LLB degrees and diplomas.
“The idea that the law school should disappear from the legal arena sounds very grating to my ears, and that is why I’m using this platform to sound a note of caution to the government,” he said.
The call for reform is driven by a long-standing issue of limited admission capacity at the GSL, which has left thousands of LLB graduates unable to continue their professional training.
For instance, in the 2024 admissions cycle, only 1,441 out of 5,000 applicants were admitted. The proposed bill, championed by Attorney General Dr. Dominic Ayine, seeks to address this by decentralizing the training and introducing a standardized national bar exam.
Mr. Ansa-Asare appealed to the graduating students to join the conversation and advocate for the preservation of the Ghana School of Law, urging them to “add your little voices to the other voices, so that together we will save the legal profession.”
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