Director of the Ghana School of Law, His Lordship Barima Nana Yaw Oppong, has expressed the institution’s full support for the decentralization of professional legal training proposed by Attorney General Dr. Dominic Ayine.
The Attorney General recently revealed plans to present a bill to Parliament that would allow universities currently running LLB programmes to offer the Bar Practice Programme as well. This would effectively dismantle the Ghana School of Law’s longstanding monopoly, broadening access to professional legal education across the country.
Despite the implications, the Director of the School welcomed the competition during a meeting with members of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee held on Thursday, July 31.
“First of all, competition is good. Those universities, I will call them yet to be established factories. But we have had this factory for more than 60 years, tried and tested. We have the best lecturers here, the best staff to ensure that the place is clean, and the place is well managed. People will be more interested in where they can get the best professional legal education.”
Barima Nana Yaw Oppong also urged Parliament to support the Ghana School of Law in obtaining its own founding statute. Despite its pivotal role in shaping legal professionals for more than six decades, the School operates without a formal legislative foundation.
“We’re urgently requesting that we have our own statute to train our students. Get us the law, and let’s compete with all the universities that the law will permit them to train professional law students,”.
He further expressed confidence in the School’s ability to remain at the top of the legal education hierarchy, even in a diversified academic ecosystem.
“Then we will have a league table and we will see which university students will be the best students, and I can tell you, I’m prophesying that no other school will beat us.”
