The National Association of Law Students has issued a strongly-worded petition, urging the Chief Justice to use his position as the Chairperson of the General Legal Council (GLC) to ensure the admission of some 499 candidates who passed the 2021 entrance exam immediately.

The aggrieved students are also calling for a reduction in the cost of remarking and a scrapping of the repeat policy at the Ghana School of Law and other pressing demands.

In the seven-page statement, the leadership of the Association lamented the difficulties with acquiring legal education in Ghana.

According to them, since 2012, the GLC has erected many roadblocks, making it cumbersome for students to become lawyers in the country.

Meanwhile, such students can excel in other jurisdictions when they leave the country's shores, the group fumed.

“Thousands of LLB holders in this country who are unsuccessful at this entrance exam are compelled to travel to places such as The Gambia and other common law jurisdictions to undertake the professional law component of their legal training.

"Many others who cannot find financial resources, to do so remain hopeless, jobless and some even develop mental health complications," the statement said. 

The concerned students also bemoaned the repeat policy, which according to them, is designed to make legal education ‘unnecessarily frustrating and defective’.

In the wake of the perennial challenges highlighted by the group, and following the recent controversies surrounding this year’s entrance examination results, the association have therefore tabled six demands before the Council for onward consideration.

Apart from the call for the immediate admission of some 499 students and the reduction of the remarking fee to a minimum of ¢300, the students are also pleading with the Attorney General, Godfred Dame - the President’s representative on the General Legal Council to order the GLC to submit a roadmap for the remarking of entrance scripts with regulations on how faculties can offer tuition for the professional law course within 14 days.

They are also asking the General Legal Council to abolish the annual undertaking students sign, which prevents them from challenging the results of the entrance exams.

In addition, the aggrieved students also want the Council and the Independent Exam Committee (IEC) to publish the marking scheme for the 2021 exams immediately, with a complete abolishing of the repeat policy by the Ghana School of Law.

On September 28, 2021, the Council issued a release where 790 candidates who sat for the 2021 entrance exams had passed, out of the total of 2,824 students who wrote the exams.

The said publication was met with many resentments from the general public, including Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare and other notable voices of dissent.

However, the General Legal Council insists that the results are credible, despite calls for a review and the admission of some 499 students who were denied admission, despite having attained the ‘required’ 50% pass mark.