Inherited legal system not fit for purpose — Ansa-Asare

A legal luminary, Kwaku Ansa-Asare, has said that the country’s inherited legal education system is no longer fit for purpose and risks undermining the country’s justice delivery if it is not overhauled. 

He said the system, largely modelled on the English legal tradition, had failed to evolve in line with the country’s socio-economic realities, leaving the legal profession at a critical crossroads.

“We inherited a model we did not understand and which had no socio-economic relevance to our circumstances,” Mr Ansa-Asare, who is also a former Director of Legal Education, said.

He added that continuing on that path would only deepen the existing crisis in legal education.

Mr Ansa-Asare, the Founder of MountCrest University College, was speaking at a public lecture organised by MountCrest University College in Accra last Wednesday, on the theme: “Ghana’s Inherited Legal Profession: Legal Education at the Crossroads”.

He said efforts to restructure legal education would not achieve the desired results unless fundamental structural challenges, particularly access to professional legal training, were addressed.

He said the current arrangement continued to limit progression for many qualified law graduates, with bottlenecks in the transition from academic training to professional qualification.

“We have not honestly confronted the issues that call for the reform.

The problem has always been one of a system in search of solutions,” he said. 

Mr Ansa-Asare also said the politicisation of the legal profession had over time affected the direction of legal education and reform efforts.

He said competing interests within political parties had contributed to delays and inconsistencies in implementing reforms, leaving critical issues unresolved.

Structural challenges

Mr Ansa-Asare said the dual system of legal training — at the universities and the Ghana School of Law — remained disconnected.

He explained that while universities focused on academic and theoretical foundations, the professional school concentrated on procedural training, creating a gap between knowledge and practice.

That situation, he said, had contributed to inefficiencies and frustrations among law graduates.

“At the academic stage, you are taught where to find the law, but at the professional stage, you are taught how to apply it. The two are fundamentally different,” he said.

He called for a stronger emphasis on clinical legal education to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

He said students must be exposed to practical training, including handling real cases under supervision, to prepare them adequately for legal practice.

“Students must be given the opportunity to learn by doing, just as medical students are trained through practical exposure,” he said.

He added that ongoing reforms, which introduced clinical legal education from the early stages of training, would help to improve outcomes.

Mr Ansa-Asare said there was the need to develop a legal education model tailored to the country’s context.

He said attempts to combine British and American systems had created confusion within the legal education framework.

“Either we craft our own model or we continue to operate a system that does not serve our national interest,” he said.

UK experience

The Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London, Professor Carl Stychin, shared the United Kingdom’s experience, where reforms in legal education had produced both gains and challenges.

He said the expansion of law programmes had resulted in a growing number of graduates, while opportunities for professional training such as pupillage and training contracts remained limited.

“Our LLB degree was growing exponentially. Bigger and bigger numbers of students, but only a small number would ever join the profession,” he said.

Prof. Stychin also spoke about the shift towards a market-driven system where students were treated as consumers, a development that had influenced how legal education was delivered and regulated.

He said reforms must balance innovation with quality assurance to protect the public interest.

This is as much a cautionary tale as anything,” he said.

Reform process

The Minister of Labour, Jobs and Employment, Dr Abdul-Rashid Pelpuo, said the ongoing reforms in legal education would help to address long-standing challenges in the system.

He said attention was being given to the transition from academic training to professional qualification, which had been a major concern for many students.

He expressed confidence that the reforms would reduce the difficulties faced by students who repeatedly attempted professional examinations.

“We will ensure that students do not go through this process of writing exams and failing repeatedly,” he said.

Dialogue platform

The lecture formed part of MountCrest’s thought leadership series aimed at promoting discussions on the future of legal education.

It brought together legal practitioners, academics and students to examine the inherited structure of the legal profession, ongoing reforms and opportunities for rethinking legal education in the country.

New law

The Legal Education Reform Act 2025 passed in March this year brings historic changes to legal training in the country, eliminating the Ghana School of Law’s monopoly of professional training.

The law introduces a one-year “Bar Practice Programme” at accredited universities, followed by a centralised National Bar Exam.

Key components include decentralised training where accredited universities, rather than just the Ghana School of Law, will now provide professional legal training; abolishment of the Ghana School of Law entrance exam and admission structure; the introduction of a new, standardised exam similar to the chartered accountant model, among others.