Supreme Court judge nominee Yoni Kulendi has backed calls for reforms in Ghana’s legal education system.

The private legal practitioner with over two decades experience at the bar said the current system is creating academic casualties which must be fixed with reforms.

Facing parliament’s Appointments Committee on Tuesday, Mr Kulendi said previously there was only one Faculty of Law and one professional law school.

However, the number of faculties have grown with the increase in population and interest in different disciplines; but the professional law schools have not increased, he lamented.

All MPs and appointees into the executive arms of government, he said need a basic understanding of how the law works.

According to Mr Kulendi, the desire by these groups themselves to have a working knowledge of the law have created more influx into law faculties.

With such a situation, he said there is bound to be a rush into the professional school, the Ghana School of Law which is creating casualties.

Mr Kulendi says the reforms to address these challenges must be robust and able to stand the test of time.

The nominee’s reactions come amid the controversial calls for reforms into the country’s legal education system after successive mass failures at the entry and exit points of the Ghana School of Law.

In 2019, for instance, only a paltry 128 out of 1,820 LLB holders who sat for the entrance exam into the Ghana School of Law passed.

This was after a series of mass failures at the bar and previous mass failures at the entry point.

The Student Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law has organised demonstrations to protest the mass failures and push for reforms which allow flexible entry into the law school.

The former Chief Justice who was the head of the General Legal Council which regulates legal education previously vowed that there would be no mass production of lawyers under her watch.

A position that courted backlash from critics who said mass production does not equal inferior production.

Meanwhile, there are ongoing talks into reviewing the legal education system.