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The Chief Justice, Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, has dispelled the notion that the General Legal Council is producing too many lawyers in the country.
He said, contrary to that, currently the practising lawyers in the country were not more than 5,000, describing the figure as woefully insufficient.
Justice Baffoe-Bonnie added that the situation of the number of practising lawyers was worsened as most of the lawyers, “have also run to parliament, further reducing the numbers that are actually representing.
“People get the impression that there are too many lawyers; we are turning out too many lawyers. They don't even say you are turning out. They say you are churning out.
“The word churn actually connotes mass production and, for that matter, cheap sales. But this is not true. We are not turning out cheap commodities.
“We are not turning out excess commodities. The numbers don't tell us that. We are even in a way not near what we should be,” Justice Baffoe-Bonnie stated this when he paid a courtesy call on the Director-General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) in Accra.
The courtesy call was to congratulate the GTEC on embarking on the sanitation of the tertiary education space, and also to officially introduce himself as the new Chief Justice, as well as to discuss his vision in the area of legal education reforms in the country.
The Chief Justice was accompanied by the Judicial Secretary Musah Ahmed, the Ag Director of the Ghana School of Law, Professor Raymond A. Atuguba, and other support staff of the Chief Justice Secretariat.
The Chief Justice expressed concern that, currently, access to justice in the country was restricted in terms of the number of lawyers.
He said ordinarily, all the local assemblies and the Regional Houses of Chiefs should have lawyers, adding that currently, institutions such as GTEC should have more than five lawyers.
To address this seeming shortage of lawyers, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie explained that instead of having all LLB students coming from the various institutions to struggle to enter a law school that can take no more than 2,500 at a time, “we are thinking of having the accredited law faculties to do the law school work.
Then, they will all come and write the final information.”
He explained that currently, the aggregate number of LLB students every year was more than 4,000, aside from the backlog awaiting.
Briefing the team, Prof. Atuguba disclosed that a total of 4,036 people wrote their LLB exam last year and only 2,042 were admitted.
“That's because the Chief Justice was insistent on reviewing everything and making sure that all those who qualified came,” he explained, adding that the absolute limit of the number the school could admit was 2,500.
“But remember, there are repeat students. And this time, there were repeat students of 392, and so, when you add that to the 2,042, you are almost getting to the 2,500 limit,” Prof. Atuguba added.
Responding, Prof. Jinapor thanked the Chief Justice for paying a courtesy call on the institution and assured him that GTEC was prepared to work with the GLC, “to see how this whole revolution relative to legal education in Ghana can be one that is done, and done right.
“For us as a commission, the way we operate is, we work for anybody who wants to run education. Especially being a professional education.
The Commission is a vehicle,” he explained.
