Government abolishes law entrance exams in major education reform
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Law graduates across Ghana are set to gain easier access to professional legal training after the government officially scrapped the controversial entrance examinations that for decades served as a major hurdle to becoming a lawyer.
The development follows President John Dramani Mahama’s assent to the Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025, a landmark legislation that dismantles the 66-year monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Monday, May 11, Majority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for South Dayi, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, confirmed that the reforms have already taken immediate effect.
“The entrance exams, as we know, no longer exist effective immediately,” Dafeamekpor stated.
According to him, all accredited law schools in the country will now operate under a unified admission framework supervised by the newly established Council for Legal Education and Training.
He explained that even if the Ghana School of Law secures accreditation under the new system, it cannot independently continue the entrance examination process without approval from the new regulatory body.
Under the reforms, universities accredited by the Council for Legal Education and Training will be permitted to offer professional legal education programmes which is a shift from the previous structure where the Ghana School of Law exclusively handled professional legal training since 1959.
Although thousands of students graduated annually with Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degrees from public and private universities, only a limited number gained admission into the professional law programme.
The entrance exams frequently recorded relatively questionable rates, triggering years of criticism from students and academics.
This issue has sparked criticism nationwide where some argue that the system unfairly restricted access to legal education despite the growing number of qualified LLB graduates.
President Mahama, while signing the bill into law on Monday, said the reforms were designed to strike a balance between expanding access and preserving professional standards within Ghana’s legal sector.
According to him, the law seeks to maintain quality and expand access at the same time.
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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