AG's bill seeks to amend exiting legislation on educating legal professionals
The bill is yet to be laid before Parliament
Kwaku Ansa-Asare, a former Director of the Ghana School of Law, has advised the Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame to withdraw the new Legal Profession Bill because some clauses are laughable.
According to him, the AG must do further consultation with relevant stakeholders before such a bill is laid before the House.
“I will say that the entire bill at this stage must be withdrawn. First, because there have not been sufficient stakeholder consultations. What the Attorney General seems to be doing is rushing a bill that has not been considered by stakeholders. Secondly, there seems to be a lot of politicking going on with legal education,” Ansa-Asare told JoyNews.
“What the nation needs at this stage is to widen access to legal education in order to be able to confront and combat the numerous human rights issues confronting the country,” he added.
The new bill which is yet to be laid before parliament has been criticized by law students and other stakeholders since its content became public.
The bill, which will be seeking to consolidate and amend the existing legislation regulating the profession, empowers the General Legal Council to allocate quotas to universities that the Council has approved to run the Bachelor of Laws program.
This clause has been criticized as further shutting the door to legal education in the country.
The already discarded interview process as part of the admission into the Ghana Law School will be reintroduced in this bill.
Under the new bill, the Independent Exams Committee will now become a creation of Law and to appeal decisions of the General Legal Council’s Disciplinary Committee, affected persons can no longer go to the High Court but the Supreme Court.
In a reaction, Kwaku Ansa-Asare said, “On the issue of licensing and recognition, I think these are panicky measures that the Attorney General is seeking to introduce. Ayine draws attention to a very laughable point, the bill is seeking to license the University of Ghana Law faculty? The mother of Law faculties in this country, how do you go about this? What’s the government’s policy on this? Who’s calling the shots?”
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