7% Passed Law Exam: Legal Council Increased Admmission quota but results just bad – Member reveals

A member of the General Legal Council (GLC) has disclosed that Legal Council Increased Admmission quota for the 2019/20 Academic year.

He said   provisions were made to admit more students to the very selective Ghana Law School this academic year.

Joseph Dindiok Kpemka said on Saturday that at least two universities were contacted for a sizeable space for teaching and learning prior to the conduct of the Ghana Law School examinations in which over 90% of students failed to make the cut.

The Deputy Attorney-General said the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) and another university

(whose name he could not recall) were contacted for extra space to admit at least 1,000 students.

“We anticipated that this year, we were going to have larger numbers so we put in place measures to ensure that we will be able to accommodate them. So we went to UPSA to look for a bigger auditorium in anticipation of the larger that will be coming.

“We went to another private university – I have forgotten the name – to find an auditorium. We made alternative arrangements in anticipation of the fact that we will have about a thousand or more…and we got some of the facilities and the results turned that we wouldn’t need those facilities,” the member of the GLC said on JoyNews/MultiTV Newsfile.

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Mass failure

Meanwhile,tthe latest results of the Ghana Law School entrance exams released recently showed yet another bout of mass failure as only

128 out of 1,820 candidates who sat for assessment passed.

Passing the prestigious law school exams grants a law degree holder (LLB) the chance to study law practice for two years and if successful would be called to the bar.

The GLC, administrators of legal education in Ghana, has been blamed for deliberately masterminding mass student failures due to a lack of space.

This claim is further fueled by a public declaration three months ago by the Chairperson of the GLC, Sophia Akuffo, the Chief Justice, that she was strongly against “mass production of lawyers.”

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Justice Sophia Akuffo said having sat in many disciplinary proceedings to examine alleged breaches of professional code of ethics

by members of the bar, she shudders to see a day that legal education will be opened to  admit more.

Many interpret this to mean a GLC policy to deliberately limit admittance into the law profession – a policy that is being manifested by the mass failures.

However, the Deputy Attorney said on Newsfile that CJ’s personal position on whether

to open or close legal education must not be misconstrued as a GLC policy.

“The CJ is the Chairperson of the General Legal Council, yes, but the CJ is not an examiner, she doesn’t mark scripts, she doesn’t set questions.

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“You can put all the type of meanings ascribed to it but the fundamental thing is whether or not she has the capacity to directly interfere with mass production of lawyers if the [students] are capable,” he said.

Mr Kpemka revealed that personally, he is also in support to open up legal education.