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Indeed, with the increasing numbers of new lawyers being called to the Bar, I have very strongly requested the executive of the Bar Association to communicate to all new lawyers that unless there is a clean and clear record that proves that lawyers have done pupillage, the General Legal Council will not be in a position to license them to practice law in the jurisdiction.
So will it be with all conditions required for renewal of practicing licenses.
On the progress of the digitalization agenda of the Judiciary, this is irreversible.
I am happy to report that we have actively started the digitization of appeal records, so that they are transmitted electronically, thereby reducing the cost of producing multiple records manually and also making their corrections easier.
We have also started the process of delivering to the nation a paperless Supreme Court and Court of Appeal registry.
It is my ardent prayer that by the time I stand before you next year, God giving us all life, this process would have reached completion.
I am also glad to report that the one hundred new courts that continue to be delivered by the District Assembly Common Fund have taken the need for the building of new courts off the table, Your Excellency, your government has achieved this feat still, many courts continue to reflect inordinately high caseloads.
From the data received from the current 450 trial courts in operation as at the end of August, 43 have a load higher than 300 cases on their list, and 25 courts have a case load higher than 500, with ten courts burdened by more than 800 cases.
This is not healthy for the Judges and all stakeholders in the adjudication process.
The response of Judicial management is not to seek the building of new court rooms to solve these anomalies, but to rationalize the use of existing court rooms to cater for areas with higher caseloads, deploy more Judges to assist with high caseloads, and to increase the use of virtual courts.
This is what has led to the establishment of afternoon courts and Saturday courts.
There are also as many as 63 courts with a case load of fewer than 50 cases on their list.
In such courts, we reduce staff, and engage judges that travel itinerantly to sit over those few cases.
In conclusion, allow me to alert the Bar of my intention to start a crusade to terminate the culture of ‘mentioning’ cases.
This is a practice that hurts everyone involved.
Citizens and lawyers leave their businesses and homes to travel to court to do nothing except to hear the title of their case called out.
With the introduction of witness statements, the period of court room work has been shortened and all stakeholders in justice delivery are encouraged to use court time efficiently by fixing dates for hearing only after processes have been filed, or expiration of the time statutorily provided for parties to file and serve needed processes.
In those circumstances, if a party fails to adhere to the statutorily conferred time for responding with their own processes, courts will be encouraged to conduct hearings without them.
My prayer is that the legal community rallies to give the nation effective court experiences, so that the traumatizing history of ‘adjournments’ is erased from the mind of the nation.
I thank all stakeholders in the legal and justice sectors for their anticipated support as we get ready for the new legal year.
I know the tenure of the current national executive is up and elections for new executives form part of the agenda for this conference.
I must articulate my gratitude for the excellent support and cooperation that the current executive have given me this past year.
It was a joy working with you, and I look forward to welcoming the new executive to the General Legal Council, the Judicial Council and the Rules of Court Committee.
God bless you all, and may He make His face to shine upon the nation as we tackle the on-coming elections in a transparent manner that will sustain Ghana’s democracy.
May the Lord give us His peace.
On this note, I declare the 2024-2025 Annual General Conference of the Ghana Bar Association duly opened.
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE HONOURABLE LADY CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE GERTRUDE SACKEY TORKORNOO, AT THE 61ST CALL TO THE BAR Date: Friday, 11 th October, 2024 Venue: Accra International Conference Centre Theme: “The Journey of Law in a Changing World”.
My Lords Justices of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court who form the Superior Courts of Judicature The Judicial Secretary of Ghana The Honourable Minister of Justice and Attorney-General with The Deputy Minister, Hon.
Diana Asonaba Dapaah The Honourable Ministers for Communication, Works and Housing and Minister of Education The Director, Ghana School of Law, Justice Nana Yaw Barima Kodie Deans, Directors and Rectors of the various campuses of the Ghana School of Law, Members of the General Legal Council and other Councils of the Judiciary and the Ghana Bar Associations The National President and Executives of the Ghana Bar Association Your Honors and Worships Beloved families, friends, sponsors and guardians of the our new cohort of lawyers enrolled in October 2024, Distinguished Invited Guests Our Partners in the Media Huge Congratulations to all new lawyers, parents, families, significant others, lecturers and administrators of the Ghana School of Law and its various campuses, and all who have been part of this tough and ardous journey of realizing the dreams and goals of becoming a lawyer.
Thank you for helping our new lawyers, and thank you to the lawyers for making it your commitment to make the sacrifices that have brought you to the new laurel you hold this morning.
May the Lord of Heaven bless your journey of being a lawyer, and make you a lawyer par excellence.
We wish you well and cheer you on.
In my address this morning, I wish to have a conversation titled ‘The journey of the lawyer in a changing world’.
The journey of studying law itself should not go beyond two to four years of an undergraduate course, and two years of a professional course.
During these years, every lawyer in a common law jurisdiction is expected to study a minimum of seven legal disciplines at the undergraduate stage, and any number of courses at the Professional level thereafter, depending on the jurisdiction of the country.
In the last years, some of you have been on this journey for more than the expected or stipulated five years.
But of course, even when it is just five years, this Journey of becoming a lawyer is still a very long journey.
Many started with you, and are yet to complete all required papers.
Some almost breasted the tape, but for acts that raised questions about their integrity, compelling the General Legal Council, to conduct further investigations into these issues.
You have passed the tests of competence and moral character.
At every stage in this journey, you have had to stretch your minds to new concepts, doctrines, precepts and structures of law.
This is why we must say a very deserving Ayekoo to all of you who have been able to endure and complete this program of study.
Now that you have finished these studies as a foundation for knowing the law, you are going to encounter the real scope of the law and the extent to which law is the foundation of every human activity.
You are going to find that the fact situations you have to deal with in solving problems are as many as the experiences of life.
The world is a continuously evolving and changing place, from a simple examination of history.
The historical, sociological and political structures of humanity in antiquity are not the same or even similar to the world that we are in now.
Neither is the world of even the last century, the 20 th century, anything like that of this early part of the 21 st century.
Until 1980s, technologies did not exist to see people beyond the physical sphere unless it was in photographs and big screen movie.
Now, following the technology that introduced television, we have moved rapidly through video to ability to see each other in real time no matter which end of the world communicants are in.
Even more mind boggling, we have found that technology exists now which is able to make us see people act and speak in ways that they actually have not done and spoken.
So not only can we record videos, but we can superimpose image and activity with algorithms that are designed to replace reality.
The era of internet and artificial intelligence has thrown us into the era of fake news, misinformation and disinformation.
This opens up vistas of both criminal and civil law beyond anything that we can anticipate.
And with all of this, we need to be keenly conscious of the fact that human conduct and innovation does not wait for law.
It is law that always has to catch up with human conduct.
So the grand issue facing all of us in this country, as part of the global community and in the face of virtual reality and digital technology that we now use seamlessly is – how do we navigate with legality the global community of ‘netizens’ and activities that technology has thrust us into.
As part of the global community, Ghana cannot side step its participation in every form of economy that technology is introducing.
Entertainment has changed, even currency is taking on a global character, including every day trading and communication.
What are the legal precepts that we will need to resolve issues that arise within political communications engineered among netizens – that is citizens who are only linked by interests, objectives and subjects, citizens who do not owe allegiance and loyalty to a physical territory because the community is only virtual and in the air.
Law school cannot go on beyond five years, but legal learning must go on beyond the end of law school.
Thus at best, what you went through in the last five years just provided you with skills on how to learn the art of construing, interpreting, applying, and administering law.
As you leave here with your certificates, you are supposed to use those skills, knowledge and values given in law school to serve your communities.
This will include the ability to evaluate, the ability to distil facts, find the applicable law, evaluate, reason, structure and weave applicable law into solving problems.
These are hard tasks and would be hard tasks without the current blurred and manipulatable state of the world.
Even worse is the situation that we do not even know the direction of this digital landscape, in order to gather the materials that will give us appropriate legal principles to direct situations that develop and evolve as innovators continue with their work.
Your time in school taught you to become experts in skills, values, concepts and in this blurred world of netizens, virtual realities, etc, we must all learn to use that expertise to handle what the future brings.
And we cannot help but be reminded that in every wave of history, every tide of history, through slavery, industrialization, colonization, and wars, it is law that has provided the structure and support for proper social engineering.
Even in war, it is the laws of war that assist human kind to carry on that nasty activity without totally annihilating everyone off the planet.
If evil is to be kept at bay, law, lawyering, orderliness and legality has to be at the front of the march.
So I invite you to resolve to continue to be committed learners otherwise you cannot serve society in this fast changing world.
You should leave here resolved to lead your communities with consistently refreshed knowledge in order not to destroy the expectations of society.
You should resolve to be good citizens, and nothing else.
Ghana as a nation has always been led by lawyers.
Within this context, it is important for us to remember that Ghana as it is now, was not a nation until 1956.
History provides the information that all the different parts of Ghana finally came together only one year before independence in 1957.
And almost immediately with independence in 1957, we had to start learning how to accommodate each other, trust each other, work together, and harmonize our legal environment to build the nation.
Anger, disappointment, discontent led to three major disruptions in our bid to be ruled by Constitutionalism and the rule law and nothing but law.
The 1960 Constitution was disrupted in 1966; the 1969 Constitution was disrupted in 1971.
The 1979 Constitution was disrupted in 1981.
Fortunately and blessedly, the 1992 Constitution is still going strong thirty-two years later.
From this narrative, our country has flowed and ebbed and moved in waves.
When the nation is on high tide, lawyers are there to support the shaping of the nation.
In low tide, it is lawyers who must be there to support the nation.
Lawyers must not be part of destructive conversations or activities that break a nation up.
Lawyers must not be part of activities that destroy the national economy whether it is the political economy, environmental economy or social economy.
Lawyers must be those who rally around with knowledge, doctrines, precepts, values and skills to build the nation up in every circumstance of growth.
It is a big charge and all we have is the five years of learning that provide knowledge in twenty plus courses.
That is the infrastructural resource that you have been given.
The rest of it, you, like all of us in the legal fraternity, must find the law, and bring it to grow our nation.
You bring that knowledge to help with social engineering.
As you take your place in the community of lawyers, may God bless our homeland Ghana and make her great and strong because you joined this honourable learned fraternity.
Because you joined the fraternity of the law, let is be said that our nation became greater and stronger in this time of its history.
Let me close by speaking about the pupillage you need before you can receive your practicing license.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have sacrificed money, time, sleep and so much to become lawyers.
Let it not be said that you could not get a practising license because you did not convince the General Legal Council that you had done your 6 months pupillage.
There are not enough law firms in Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi to accommodate all of you.
Please find out where law firms are around the country, stay in other parts of the country, work with law firms there and get this critical part of the professional requirement out of the way.
Enjoy more of our country as part of your training.
God bless you and congratulations again and again.
10 TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF THE LAW FACULTY OF CENTRAL UNIVERSITY ‘ The Sustainability of Excellent Legal Education in Tertiary institutions in Ghana: The Way Forward’ Keynote Address by Her Ladyship Justice Gertrude Sackey Torkornoo Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana DATE: Friday, 29 TH November 2024 VENUE: Best Western Premier Hotel, Airport Residential Area PROTOCOLS Introduction Law and regulation are the structures upon which order, stability and prosperity are built and sustained.
In this paper, I will adopt the generic term of ‘legal industry’ or ‘legal sector’ to describe all aspects of the development and implementation of law, and all the practitioners who play a critical role in the development of law in society – whether as legislators, jurists, practicing lawyers, corporate lawyers, or public servants.
Law is so intrinsic to human arrangements that its development consistently commences from a primal source, recognizable without being clear, leading to the philosophies that provide foundation for discussions on the sources of law, legality and justice.
These philosophies include the grund norm doctrine, and morality as a diffused and unascertainable source of law, or imperialism and autocracy as the foundation for the formation of law where edicts recognized as law must necessarily emanate from the final voice in the land.
From its contribution to the maintenance of order, ensuring safety and security within the state, the conduct and trade and commerce, formulation of rules and policies for human care and health, to the creation and sustainability of governance and power structures, law directs the due process of human affairs.
These intrinsic factors beget the crucial role and functions that legal actors such as law makers, lawyers, judges and other quasi legal and regulatory officers play in the proper development of society.
As they shape the articulation of acceptable customary norms and practices into principles and doctrines, enact laws, interpret and apply existing laws, all stakeholders assist to shape the legal and regulatory framework that supports the functioning and dynamic evolution of law, power, and economic relations.
Education and training to shape the learning and skills of legal technocrats therefore calls for the provision of viable and responsive structures that will enable the production of the highest quality of legal officers that can positively guide the development of law, legality and justice in the society.
In my conversation this evening, I invite us to begin by looking at the history of legal education in Ghana mirrored against education modules found in some other jurisdictions.
I will thereafter share my thoughts on what I consider to be viable recommendations in the journey of developing legal education.
History of Legal Education in Ghana The development of the formal legal system of Ghana through provincial courts commenced soon after the Bond of 1844.
The Supreme Court Ordinance of Ghana was also enacted in 1876, after the proclamation of the creation of the Gold Coast colony by the British.
It was to be ‘ an ordinance for the Constitution of a Supreme Court and for other purposes relating to the Administration of Justice ’.
Despite these developments of a formal legal system, formal legal education with the nation did not start until about a century later, and after independence.
Ghana’s pioneer lawyers and judges were therefore trained outside the country, mostly in England.
The Ghana Law School (GLS), the precursor institution to the present-day Ghana School of Law (GSL) opened in 1958 after the country’s premier Attorney-General, Geoffrey Bing, in the previous year had successfully advocated for a localized center to train lawyers and obviate the necessity of Ghanaians moving to London to study at the Inns of Court.
The school which was established in the heart of the commercial district in Accra, Makola, its present-day location was designed to be administered by the General Legal Council (GLC).
The GLC was also charged with regulation of the legal profession under the Legal Profession Act of 1960 (Act 32).
The Law school was set up to offer a one-year practical course for law graduates to prepare students for the English Bar Examination.
Students would then be eligible to practice law in Ghana on completing a compressed syllabus over the course of a three-year diploma program.
Over the last six decades, legal education has undergone very few significant changes and modifications.
While still operating and headquartered in Makola, the current Ghana School of Law has four satellite campuses in Accra and Kumasi and continues to bear responsibility for professional legal training.
Accredited public and private universities offering a law degree program provide qualified applicants who have obtained passes in ten (10) courses at the law degree level for the Ghana School of Law Entrance Examinations.
Additionally, students undertake a 6-month pupillage after their enrolment at the Bar Prior to 2015, the Ghana School of Law was running a two-year Professional Law Course program with no internship.
Under that system, twelve (12) Courses were taught over a period of two years.
The academic year started in October and ended in June, the following year.
In dealing with the increasing number of applicants to the school because of the proliferation of private universities offering an LLB Program, the General Legal Council proposed changes to the professional training of law students.
The changes were aimed at enabling higher standards in professional legal training.
Under the reforms, the Professional Law Course was still to run for a period of two (2) years.
Classroom work was reduced to a period of twelve (12) calendar months between October and September each year with the students studying ten (10) Courses.
In addition to academic work, students were mandated to undertake a 6-month compulsory internship in approved Law Firms, Legal Departments and the Judiciary.
An exit interview was conducted at the end of the internship program.
Entrance examination and interviews were introduced as the basis of entry into the Ghana School of Law.
The interviews provided an avenue for confirming the suitability of the successful candidates for admission to the school.
Following parliamentary intervention, the requirement of the interview was dispensed with under the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018 (L.I.2355).
The Council also constituted an Independent Examination Committee comprising competent persons who did not work at the Ghana School of Law to administer all entry and exit examinations in the Ghana School of Law.
Upon careful evaluation, at the beginning of the 2018/2019 academic year, the Council reverted to the two-year program where students wrote the Professional Law Course Examinations at the end of each academic year.
The 6-month compulsory internship was embedded in the two-year program.
The duration for pupillage will be extended to one year when the new Legal Profession Bill is passed.
This is the current state of legal education in Ghana.
Having examined the history of legal education in Ghana to its present day, it would be prudent to avert our minds to what pertains in some key jurisdictions and the lessons that may be employed in Ghana.
Legal education modules found in some other jurisdictions United Kingdom Unlike Ghana which has one legal training component for lawyers, whether they work as solicitors in firms, or barristers appearing before courts, the training components in the United Kingdom are separated for solicitors and barristers.
Material available informs that in England and Wales, the traditional route for entry into the legal profession as a solicitor involves completing an undergraduate law degree (LLB), and undertaking professional training currently referred to as the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) which is replacing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and the Legal Practice Course (LPC).
Additionally, there are work placement programs similar to Ghana’s extant legal training regime.
Law students are required to complete two years of qualifying legal work experience, which can include a training contract, before passing the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) character and suitability requirements after which a student can then apply for admission to the roll of solicitors.
It takes about five to six years to qualify as a solicitor on full time basis.
This includes a three-year law degree, SQE assessments and two-year of qualifying legal work experience.
The training is however extended if you studied a non-law subject for your degree.
A student must complete at least three stages of training to become a barrister in England and Wales.
This includes a three-year law degree, one year for a Bar course and a one-year pupillage in chambers.
This full program traditionally covers five years to become a full-fledged barrister.
My researchers also inform me that there is, however, an alternative route that is available to A-level graduates, paralegals and chartered legal executives such that they do not have to go to law school or have a university degree.
Such persons may complete a Solicitor’s Apprenticeship which is a six-year, 7 Level program.
There is also an option through a different route of combining work with study to become what is known as a CILEx Professional Qualification (CPQ).
The three stages to cross with this route include the foundation, analogous to the role of a paralegal; an advanced stage involving handling work at an advanced paralegal level, and the professional stage for persons choosing specialist area of law with full practice rights as CILEx lawyers.