10TH 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 o
Source: judicial_service_of_ghana
Date: 2024-11-29

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. A person who has an undergraduate or post-graduate legal qualification will not have to start at the foundation level, making it much cheaper than university study. Students can study via CILEx Law School or through several approved providers. Each stage of qualification via the CILEx CPQ takes between eighteen months and two years depending on the speed of the student. United States of America In the 1800s, colleges in the USA began offering law degrees and the English “apprenticeship” programs continued in several states. A liberal approach to this combined module is often adopted, and the regulation of this is primarily on a state-by-state basis. I am informed that in California for instance, one may choose to undertake legal education by attending law school or participating in a program of legal studies within a law office or a judge’s chambers, also known as the Law Office Study (LOS) Programme. A student in the LOS Programme must complete four (4) years of study in a law office under the supervision of a licensed California attorney who has been active, in good standing and actively practiced law for at least the last five (5) consecutive years or in a judge’s chambers under the supervision of a judge of a court of record in California. The core elements include studying law in the law office or judge’s chambers during regular business hours for at least 18 hours each week for four (4) consecutive years followed by the passage of the first year (“baby”) bar examination. Thereafter, one has to pass the Multi-state Professional Responsibility examination and finally pass the California Bar Examination. The attorney or judge under whom the applicant is apprenticing must also satisfy certain requirements, including personally supervising the candidate for at least 5 hours per week; testing the applicant at least once a month on studies completed during the previous month; providing reports to the State Bar every 6 months regarding the applicant’s study, and not supervising more than 2 applicants during the same period. Clearly, it would take serious time commitment for both the applicant and supervising attorney/judge to successfully complete the law study requirements. The Gambia The Gambia derives its legal system from the English common law, sharing analogous authorities and legal regimes with Ghana. It offers a welcoming albeit expensive alternative for Ghanaian law students who wish to undertake the professional law training outside Ghana, after the first degree. Currently, the Gambia Law School’s curriculum covers a 1-year intensive course unlike GSL which requires a 2-year course. It must however be noted that whichever jurisdiction provides the foundational legal training, one has to undergo the post-call professional training in Ghana, because of the unique jurisdictional legal contents of every country. Nigeria Legal education in Nigeria parallels that of Ghana. It requires an eligible candidate to obtain a law degree from the Faculty of Law of any recognized university in or outside Nigeria, with a course of legal studies that is approved by the Council of Legal Education. This provide the sufficient qualification for admission to the Nigerian Law School for a one-year professional, practical training for persons wishing to be called to the Nigerian Bar. South Africa Legal training in South Africa is analogous to the version found in Ghana save for one distinctive feature - apprenticeship. South African legal education entails acquiring a law degree which takes at least 4 years in any of the country’s universities and a further 2 years doing what is termed as “law articles” (Articles of Clerkship). This consists of working under the supervision of a registered attorney and law firm akin to the apprenticeship models found in the U.S. and U.K. jurisdictions. This is then followed up by taking examinations prior to an Attorney’s admission exam. Attorney admission is the final step of becoming an attorney in South Africa after the candidate has been admitted as an attorney qualified to practice law in South Africa. Sustaining excellent legal education What may be appreciated from these different models of legal education? What exactly would comprise excellent legal education? The ambulation through different common law jurisdictions has been done to stimulate thinking about what exactly legal education entails, requires and should expect. My personal journey in the law started in 1980 when I entered the faculty of law in the University of Ghana, Legon. My studentship there ended in 1984, because no one in Ghana graduated in the year 1983, when I was scheduled to have graduated from the faculty. After two years at the Ghana Law School, and nearly 38 years as an active practitioner of law, I see the absolute merit in legal education that embraces attention to the scope of the time spent on legal education, the environment in which legal education is done, the place of skills training in legal education, and the attention to ethical content of training during legal training. Added to these four factors is the need for dynamism in the evolution of legal education, and the cultural content of legal education. These are the six strains of thought and sets of recommendations that I would like to leave with you today. Legal education in Ghana is clearly being conducted as any form of education. It is being done within the academic walls of universities, and for a season of time which allows educators to take students through silos of legal courses identified within the common law system and legislated within the Legal Profession Act as necessary components of knowledge for a common law lawyer. However, this siloed form of learning fails to communicate the very and basic nature of how law works. Law does not function in neat silos. So whether it is the review of a project contract, confrontation of criminal assault arising from domestic violence, or the drafting of legislation to support the rights of children, the legal actor involved has to have the deliberately developed skill of being able to throw their thinking wide. There must be the ability to scan all the different horizons of social contexts, existing laws, and priority of legal principles before a proper legal opinion and plan of action can be formed. Take the drafting of a project contract. A lawyer engaged in such a venture has to have not just a perfunctory understanding of project management, but also the inter-linkages between the disciplines of how project finances are raised, how project values are measured, when engineering or architectural services interface with that of other disciplines and many more issues that directly impact on the project under consideration. In the same vein, when confronted with a case of criminal assault, failure to appreciate the different standards of proof found in the law of evidence at the time of investigation and preparation of different processes for prosecution can make that prosecution dead on arrival. I could go on and on. The due development of the legal skills of analysis, evaluation, research, and considerations should not be left to the ‘post school’ environment of a lawyer that has been recommended for enrolment. This necessitates that the study of law is better done in modules that are layered with all the necessary legal skills training than the cramped walk through the different academic courses. Legal apprenticeship must commence almost as early as the learning of philosophies, doctrines and principles. I recommend to Central University, as a trail blazer, a training content that is supplemented with training in research skills, brief writing, presentations, project and legal clinics work, in an environment that ensures that as much serious attention is given to the learning of requisite legal skills as is given to the knowledge of the content. This approach demands that the environment for legal training is diversified from the onset. It must be a requisite for a first term law student to spend certain hours in the courts, and to account for those hours, for the simple purpose of revealing the intertwined nature of law as it operates in the life of ordinary citizens. This practice must be intensified during the study of the law of evidence. Legal clinics requiring the writing of briefs, presentations on real life problems must move alongside the study of criminal law and criminal procedure. There cannot be the study of constitutional law without immersion in the practical work of the Supreme Court on days when it deals with constitutional cases, and the conduct of constitutional law clinics for persons with public interest concerns. The law on civil and legal procedures, as stand-alone subjects but interlaced with the study of every area of law, and how processes and instruments in that area of law are managed procedurally. The skill of drafting must not be studied in the narrow context of civil or criminal procedure and drafting of agreements but practically addressed during the study of every area of law. Law faculties must become the place where potential legal practitioners cut their teeth in becoming problem solvers, because the discipline of law is a practical arena for problem solving. This approach to professional training and learning is nothing new. Medical students are placed into hospitals early for an extended time of study. Why is this? Because it is accepted that the learning of medicine must be conducted forensically, and it requires practical evaluation and consideration of real life problems. This is the gap in appreciation of the nature of law that, to my mind, has weakened legal education. Assuring legal practice of ethical content The development of the ethics of diligence, propriety, independent thinking, integrity in research cannot be injected overnight into lawyers when they complete schools and become subject to the Code of Conduct of the Ghana Bar Association, or join the bench and become subject to the Code of Conduct of the Association of Magistrates and Judges. Ethics is an internalized content of values and morality that gets crystallized through the environment in which a person develops. The development of a legal mindset that functions ethically should be at the stage of the law faculty and not later. It is essential therefore that if lawyers are not to graduate with weak research skills, writing, presentation and advocacy skills, and weak aptitude for evaluation and consideration of legal issues, then these skills must be inculcated through a culture of diligent research and meticulous advocacy as part of the discipline of studying law. The cultural content of legal education The common law of Ghana includes the customary laws of our beautiful country. I do not think there is any discipline or profession that is as much confronted with the weight of our different customs as is the legal profession. Primordial legal interests such as land ownership, marriage and inheritance, and the very identity of a citizen are premised within customary law. It is in this context that the study of customary law should be done with in depth focus on its relevance in many contexts of spousal rights, social welfare arrangements such as child care, criminal justice situations such as domestic violence and child or spousal abuse, as well as the regulation of labor in commercial organizations in which family relations form the basis of corporate and commercial interests. Studying the theories of the law on Trusts and Equity, Succession and Inheritance without an in depth clinical consideration of their effect on the seemingly intractable weakness in land management has left a gap in the nation’s ability to streamline the fundamental issues of capital and equity. Equally critical are the economic and social rights rendered as fundamental human rights but which can only be enabled within appropriate appreciations of the effect of customary law. Equally weak has been the nation’s due regulation of ethnic leadership and the proper devolution of power to manage family and stool assets – a situation that has often caused instability in the security and economic architecture of the nation. But I daresay that one arena in which the nation may have lost the wealth in our customary law is in the failure of legal education to streamline the study of alternative dispute resolution. The art and skills of negotiation, mediation, arbitration and their different hybrid forms have been largely lost in the dispute resolution arena for commercial conflicts, land litigation, personal injury situations and other areas of conflict that unnecessarily dog the courts. From the above, it is my view that there is a real need to fine grain the application of law to how our society is actually structured. The current gap in legal study of customary law, the law on chieftaincy, the intersectionality of chieftaincy, land, ethnic governance, capital and asset management have weakened the proper growth of our society in ways that are almost immeasurable. For the nation to develop economic strength by genuinely empowering citizens, these gaps in legal education have to be tackled sooner than later. Because of the global common law architecture, my view is that identified gaps in legal education which negatively impact on the ability of the legal sector to effectively serve the nation are best and easily tackled through strategic augmentation of class room study with carefully curated legal clinics for skills training, internships, workplace experiences, and carefully curated seminars for developing legal principles and thoughts for solving evolving social issues. When law faculties factor such learning environments into the study of law, the legal industry will become better equipped in responsiveness. The need for dynamism in the evolution of legal education I wish to conclude by requesting all stakeholders in the legal industry to actively develop strategies to proactively respond to the dynamic evolution of society. Currently, there is an urgent need to understand how every arena of law is impacted by digital technology and the derivation of legal principles on electronic evidence for every context of law. This is simply the state of society now. How are law faculties responding to this clear, urgent and pressing need? Law provides the foundational pillars for constructing society in an orderly and strong manner. Where the managers of the legal industry fail to be responsive to the needs of society in the development of critical principles and precepts that deal with social needs, society’s development can only be undermined without an appreciation of why this is happening. Where the legal industry rises to respond in proactive manner to the dynamics of social evolution, the society is better resourced for the maintenance of peace, stability and prosperity. May this be the trailblazing focus of Central University in the coming decade. God bless you Prev Next