New legal education law introduces National Bar Exam, expands access

Parliament has passed the Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025, aimed at expanding access to professional legal education in Ghana.

The Bill seeks to establish the Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate professional legal education and set the curriculum and standards.

It is expected to end the long-standing monopoly of the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education and its entrance examinations, which have, over the years, limited access for many aspiring lawyers.

As a remedy, the Bill, if assented to by the President, will allow other universities, including private institutions, to be accredited to offer professional legal programmes.

National Bar Examination

The Bill introduces a Law Practice Training Course to be offered by accredited universities to prepare candidates for a National Bar Examination.

The course will emphasise clinical legal education and the acquisition of practical lawyering skills, rather than purely theoretical instruction.

Holders of the Bachelor of Laws degree or other approved first degrees in law will be required to gain admission to the course before qualifying to sit the National Bar Examination.

The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dominic Ayine, presented the Bill to the House on October 24 last year, and it received bipartisan support.

Equality of opportunity

Moving the motion for the second reading on February 10 this year, Dr Ayine said the Bill was in line with Article 25 of the Constitution, which seeks to promote equality of opportunity for Ghanaians aspiring to become lawyers.

He explained that the reforms would address bottlenecks associated with the Ghana School of Law’s monopoly and the highly competitive entrance examination, which had made it difficult even for first-class graduates from reputable universities to gain admission.

Dr Ayine added that the accreditation regime would ensure quality control so that not every law faculty would qualify to train candidates for the Bar.

“We are also introducing the National Bar Exam so that those who go through the law practice training course at the accredited universities can all write the National Bar Exam, which will be a standardised exam that will be administered by the Council for Legal Education and its Bar Examination Committee,” he said.

A new era

Following the passage of the Bill, the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, described it as the fulfilment of a key campaign promise by the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He said the reforms would promote equity, fairness and access to legal education.

“With the Bill successfully passed, we believe that this is the dawn of a new era where all students will be fairly treated.

“Which ever law school you go to and whichever law faculty you attend, all of us will end up at the doors of the National Bar Examination. Whether you went to Legon, UDS or you went to UCC or Winneba, we will all end up at the same place and it is there that lawyers will be determined.

“We want all to witness that we have kept the promise,” he said.

Minority raises concerns

The Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, acknowledged that the Bill was a campaign promise of the NDC and described its passage as a success for the government.

However, he criticised the government for failing to deliver on other promises.

“Mr Speaker, the President spoke about sole sourcing at the manifesto launch and talked about no sole sourcing at his first and second State of the Nation Addresses.

“But today, we know that they are the apostles of sole sourcing, and we know today that at the Presidency, the Deputy Chief of Staff has been awarded an 11 million cedi sole sourcing contract,” he said.

He added: “The very thing that they said they would not do is what they are doing”.

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