President John Dramani Mahama has signed the Legal Education Reform Bill (2025) into law, dismantling a 66-year monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education in the country.

The new law opens the door for accredited universities to offer professional law programmes, a reform that campaigners and legal educators have pushed for over many years, arguing that the existing system created unnecessary barriers to the legal profession.

Signing the bill into law on Monday, the President said the legislation was designed to do two things at once: maintain quality and expand access.

"Regulate legal education and ensure the highest standards in terms of legal education, but also to open up a space for more opportunities for legal education in Ghana," he said.

"This particular act has been one that many aspiring lawyers have been looking up to. So it'll be fine."

Since its establishment in 1958, the Ghana School of Law has been the sole institution authorised to run the professional law course required for admission to the Ghana Bar.

Critics have long argued that the arrangement bottlenecked access to legal education, with hundreds of qualified law graduates unable to secure places at the school each year.

Under the new legislation, universities that meet accreditation requirements set by the relevant regulatory bodies will now be eligible to run professional legal training programmes, effectively expanding capacity across the sector.