… e 42 LLB graduates from the maiden batch who sat the Ghana School of Law entrance examination, 28 passed. “This represents almost 70 per cent who passed and are currently in Part One of the professional law training course,” Dr Kumbuor added, noting that the General Legal Council …
… Attorney-General & General Legal Council 4.1 The Constitutional Challenge The unresolved tension between academic and professional legal education eventually found its way to the Supreme Court of Ghana in the landmark case of Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare v. …
… Against this backdrop, the interim directives issued by the Director of the Ghana School of Law, reportedly at the instance of the Attorney General and in consultation with the Chairman of the General Legal Council, raise important questions of law and governance. …
… Attorney-General & General Legal Council (2017)*, stressing that administrative directives cannot override statutory provisions established by law. …
… The act established CLET as an independent statutory body, separating the regulation of legal training from the General Legal Council (GLC), which continues to set rules for the profession and call individuals to the Bar. …
… This legislation established the Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate the curriculum and standards for legal training, effectively decoupling certain regulatory functions from the General Legal Council as originally configured under the Legal Profession Act, 1960 …
… The Act separates legal education and training from the broader regulatory responsibilities traditionally exercised under the General Legal Council structure (section 89 defines the General Legal Council as that established under the old Act 32). …
… He also raised concerns over possible ambiguities in defining what constitutes a law programme, as well as potential overlaps between the General Legal Council and institutions responsible for legal education regulation. …
… The legislation, which seeks to reform the colonial-era structures of legal training in Ghana, has sparked a heated debate between students, the General Legal Council (GLC), and policymakers over whether the controversial entrance exam has been immediately scrapped. …
The General Legal Council has approved UBIDS School of Law as one of 19 schools to run the one-year pre-bar course, enabling LLB graduates from UBIDS and other accredited law schools to prepare for admission into Professional Law Courses and the national bar examinations.
The General Legal Council has approved UBIDS School of Law as one of 19 schools to run the one-year pre-bar course, enabling LLB graduates from UBIDS and other accredited law schools to prepare for admission into Professional Law Courses and the national bar examinations.
The Legal Education Act, 2026 (Act 1170) and interim policy directives represent Ghana's most significant legal education reform since 1960, addressing a longstanding debate among legal educators, practitioners, and judges about the boundary between substantive legal education and professional legal training and who should deliver each.
An analysis in The Chronicle examines the legal and governance implications of interim policy directives issued by the Ghana School of Law on 12 June 2026, which were issued to address a regulatory vacuum created by the new Legal Education Act, 2026, pending the constitution of the Council for Legal Education and Training.
Vincent Ekow Assafuah, MP for Old Tafo, has raised concerns that Ghana's new legal education framework could indirectly reintroduce entrance examinations Parliament sought to abolish, as the interim directives allow institutions to set their own admission criteria for the Pre-Bar Course.
Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and the Council for Legal Education and Training (CLET) have agreed on a unified accreditation system for Law programmes requiring a single application pathway, joint inspection, and unified evaluation matrix. Under the framework, GTEC will oversee institutional quality assurance while CLET addresses curriculum and professional training standards, with neither body able to grant full accreditation without the other's approval.
Ghana's Legal Education Act 2026 established the Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate legal training standards, decoupling some functions from the General Legal Council. Under Section 45 of the Act, individual law institutions now set their own minimum admission standards through entrance examinations or other assessments, subject to council oversight.
Ghana has enacted the Legal Education Act, 2026 (Act 1170), replacing a framework established in 1960 that no longer suited the expanded legal education landscape. The new act aims to balance access, quality, professional competence, institutional accountability, and national development as law programmes have grown across public and private universities.
A GIMPA senior law lecturer has welcomed Ghana's newly passed Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025, as a significant step that will ease barriers for law graduates seeking admission to professional training, but argues the reforms should have extended to paralegals, support staff, pupilage, and post-professional training structures. He cautioned that implementation will determine the success of the new framework and flagged concerns about ambiguities in defining law programmes and potential overlaps in regulatory responsibilities.
Kwaku Ansa-Asare, a former Director of the Ghana School of Law, has warned aspiring lawyers against challenging the legality of the 2026 entrance examinations in court, stating that any student who does so will lose. His warning comes amid confusion over whether the Legal Education Bill signed into law by President Mahama has immediately scrapped the controversial entrance exam.
Attorney General Dominic Ayine says the government will immediately implement Ghana's new legal education reforms following President Mahama's assent to the Legal Education Bill 2026. The reforms include dissolving the General Legal Council and establishing a new Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate and accredit institutions offering the Law Practice Course, aiming to widen access to professional legal training.