The General Legal Council, in collaboration with the National Accreditation Board, is to review and develop the curricula, method of instruction and admission procedures of all approved universities running the Bachelor of Law (LLB) programme.
Currently, the Council is developing measures aimed at improving the capacities of the various institutions running the LLB programme and restructuring the operations of the independent examination committee to enable it to discharge its mandate more efficiently.
Chief Justice, Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, who is the Chairman of the General Legal Council, dropped the hint, on Thursday when speaking at the launch of the 10th anniversary of the Kumasi Campus of the Ghana School of Law.
He said the Council would ensure the full implementation of its legal authority to enrol only students who obtained LLB degree certificates from universities approved by the Council.
“All institutions offering the LLB programme will undergo a more rigorous screening process before they are approved”, he emphasised.
The criteria for assessment, the Chief Justice said, would include programme types, academic staff and qualifications, student-lecturer ratio, library holdings, physical facilities among others, adding that mentoring and inspection exercises would be intensified.
According to the Chief Justice, the legal framework for the implementation of the above “is underway and the Council will ensure broader stakeholder consultations in this regard.”
The universities, he said, “which will satisfy the laid down requirements of the Council and will eventually be given further approval to run the professional law course in the future under the overarching supervision of the Council.”
A former National President of the Ghana Bar Association, Paul Adu Gyamfi, in a keynote address, stressed the importance of more trained lawyers to be working in the entire metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies of the country.
He was of the view that the people who determine the destiny of Ghana, should be trained as lawyers to be able to shape the lives of the masses to live a life of order.
He thanked the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology for accommodating the law school which in its 10 years of establishment had churned out more than 500 lawyers who have been excelling in their fields.
The Kumasi campus was inaugurated this month as the first outside Makola in Accra, to pave way for more lawyers to be trained.
FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE, KUMASI
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