Renowned legal educator and former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Kwaku Ansa-Asare, has called for a radical overhaul of Ghana’s legal education system.
He described it as outdated, fragmented, and a colonial relic that continues to stifle innovation and competence in legal practice.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Monday, June 2, Ansa-Asare warned that Ghana risks producing law graduates who are “book-smart but courtroom-illiterate” if urgent reforms are not made.
“In the first place, the title of the proposed Legal Education Bill is troubling,” he said.
“Legal education comprises the academic route as well as the professional route. If the intention is to decentralise training and transform all law faculties into institutions capable of producing lawyers, then the bill must go beyond ‘education’ and cover legal practice as well.”
Mr Ansa-Asare believes the current piecemeal approach is deeply flawed.
“We inherited this system from the British, and it’s not helping us. We’re training lawyers in silos,” he said.
[embedded content]“In the U.S., their JD program integrates the academic and professional aspects. If you’re studying Contract Law, you also learn negotiation, mediation, drafting and opinion writing. But here, we just teach you where to find the law.”
He argued that Ghana’s three-year academic law degree does not prepare students for the realities of practice.
“The first three years are purely academic. Then you do a two-year program at the Ghana School of Law. But it’s too late. By the time you’re done, you don’t even know how to move a court.”
He described a typical scene many new lawyers face: “Your first day in court, the judge says, ‘You are before me. Move the court.’ But how do you move a court when no one taught you how to?”
Kwaku Ansa-Asare’s frustration was evident as he warned that the existing legal training system is setting up young lawyers to fail.
He stressed the need for a holistic approach.
“If we want to solve the intractable problems in training lawyers, then we must tackle every part of the system—academic, professional, and practical. Anything short of that will be a betrayal of the next generation.”
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