Expansion, access to legal education must not compromise quality - Kofi Abotsi

Legal practitioner Ernest Kofi Abotsi has said Ghana’s quest to reform its legal education must not negatively affect the quality of education.

According to him, although proposed reforms by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to expand access to professional and legal education is gratifying, it is not the answer to the country’s legal education challenges.



Read full article/> “Ultimately, everyone agrees that the expansion of access must not come at the expense of quality.”

Speaking on Joy News’ NewsFile programme, he called for a rigorous enrolment system that does not compromise on quality.

“It is not the question of opening the floodgate. It is not the question of just expanding access. It is the question of ensuring that ultimately the quality standard and quality assurance system are strong enough to ensure that the rigour and content of the training that is administered meet the standards anywhere in the world,” he said.

He charged stakeholders to work around the clock to ensure that as access is expanded the students receive the requisite content.

“The only difficulty with that is that accrediting the faculties of law will of necessity come with the issue of capacity i.e. having the requisite human resource to administer the training at that level.

“It turns out that over the years we have produced a lot of people who have the capacity often to teach the substantive law (law faculties), but not as many to teach the procedural law (law school),” he revealed.

He, however, noted that the option of abolishing the law school’s entrance exams has been considered in favour of an entrance exam for admission to the bar.