Majority Chief Whip Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor has defended the newly passed Legal Education Reforms Bill, insisting it strengthens, rather than weakens, the quality of legal training in Ghana.

Speaking in an interview on Joy FM’s Midday News, Mr. Dafeamekpor said claims that the law will lead to the production of incompetent or poorly trained lawyers are unfounded.

According to him, the new legislation introduces stricter requirements for both legal training institutions and students, making the path to becoming a lawyer more demanding than under the previous system.

“There is no way this new law will produce incompetent lawyers. In fact, standards have been heightened — both for the training institutions and the students,” he stated.

He explained that the processes prospective lawyers must now go through are more rigorous, ensuring that only qualified and capable individuals are called to the Bar.

Mr. Dafeamekpor, however, urged caution in how the law is implemented, stressing that its success will depend largely on execution rather than speculation.

He further cautioned critics against prematurely concluding that the law will result in a surge of underqualified lawyers.

“Let us not hear anybody say that this law will produce mass lawyers who are inefficient or incompetent,” he emphasised.

Parliament on March 26 passed the Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025, marking a historic reform in Ghana’s legal education system.

The legislation, which is now headed to the President for assent, ends the Ghana School of Law’s long-standing monopoly over professional legal training and opens the sector to accredited universities across the country.

The Bill establishes a Council for Legal Education and Training tasked with regulating legal education and standardising curricula nationwide. Under the new framework, universities accredited by the Council will run the Law Practice Training Course, preparing graduates to sit for a National Bar Examination.

However, critics have expressed concerns about access and quality arguing that the passage of the Bill will lead to the mass production of inefficient lawyers.

However, Mr Dafeamekpor maintains that the reforms are designed to improve standards within the legal profession and not to dilute them.