By Collins Sarkodieh 
The overhaul of Ghana’s professional legal training has hit an immediate regulatory speed bump. Member of Parliament for Old Tafo, Vincent Ekow Assafuah, has raised critical concerns regarding the transitional directives issued under the newly passed Legal Education Act of 2026.
The lawmaker warns that the administrative guidelines risk unintentionally reviving the controversial law school entrance examination system that Parliament explicitly voted to abolish.
The legislative dispute centers on the newly structured pathway to the Ghana Bar. Under the fresh Act 1170, the Independent Examinations Committee entrance test was replaced by a sequential system where Bachelor of Laws graduates complete a theoretical Pre-Bar Course before advancing to practical training and the final National Bar Examination.
Logic dictates that when Parliament bans a testing regime, state agencies cannot quietly bring it back under a different label. In an official statement, Assafuah highlighted a major flaw in the transition plan published by the Director of Legal Education, Professor Raymond Atuguba.
The directive leaves admission into the new Pre-Bar courses entirely to individual universities based on their localized capacity rules. The Old Tafo lawmaker noted that prominent institutions like Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology already use internal entry tests for their standard law degrees.
If these universities deploy similar models for the Pre-Bar phase, it effectively resurrects the old gatekeeping mechanism. Citing the historic Supreme Court ruling in Asare v Attorney-General, Assafuah reminded administrators that bureaucratic circulars can never legally override statutory parliamentary acts, demanding absolute clarity for thousands of backlog law students.
Hoping to democratize legal education while letting individual universities build arbitrary testing walls is a severe logical contradiction. While managing the transition for thousands of aspiring lawyers is undoubtedly a complex logistical challenge, the General Legal Council must align its policies with the clear letter of the law.
True institutional progress relies on uniform, transparent criteria that protect students from unpredictable institutional policies. By enforcing strict compliance with Act 1170 and eliminating backdoor entry barriers, the state can smoothly modernize the legal profession while honoring the democratic authority of Parliament.
Also Read: The End of a Legal Era: How the Legal Education Reform Act, 2025, Changes Ghana Forever
Source: ghananewspage.com