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Justice Akuffo: School of Law shouldn’t be scrapped

Justice Akuffo kicked against suggestions that the Ghana School of Law should be scrapped.

“I am not one of those who subscribe to the Ghana School of Law being scrapped,” she told parliament’s Appointments Committee on Friday, June 16, during her vetting.

Many law luminaries have suggested in the past that the Ghana Law School should be abolished.

Prof Kwame Frimpong, the founding Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), has suggested that it be scrapped.

“The Ghana Law School cannot sustain the current system, under the country’s legal education. We should let the faculties do it,” he said when the UPSA opened its new law faculty in Accra.

“If this happens, then there is no need for someone to come all the way from Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region to come to Accra just to attend a law school before he can be called a lawyer.”

Senior lawyer and lecturer at the University of Ghana, Kwame Gyan, also holds the view that the school has underserved its purpose of providing young lawyers the requisite skills to become fully fledged lawyers. According to him, the Ghana School of Law has been saddled with needless bureaucracies – an ongoing development which is documented to have stalled academic progress and public confidence in the institution.

However, Justice Akuffo expressed a different view. For her, the faculties of law at the universities only educate students academically on theories and knowledge of law while the Ghana School of Law is a professional training facility that offers practical training.

She underscored that the school trains students for example on “how to draw up a charge and you are taught how to marshal the evidence to support that charge”, among others.

For her, the Ghana Law School is the most appropriate for training and preparing individuals who wish to join the bar.