High Court dismisses suit challenging Ghana Law Society registration

A suit that sought to challenge the creation and recognition of the Ghana Law Society has failed at the High Court in Accra, with the court ruling that the matter was brought before the wrong forum.

Justice Isaac Addo struck out the case on 31 March 2026, holding that the High Court lacked jurisdiction because the law relied on by the plaintiff sets out a different route for mounting such a challenge.

The suit was filed by private legal practitioner Yaw Anning Boadu, who sought to challenge the registration and public standing of the Ghana Law Society, a newly formed lawyers’ association seen as a potential alternative to the Ghana Bar Association.

He argued that the new body was operating outside the legal framework established under the Professional Bodies Registration Act, 1973. He named the Ghana Law Society, the Registrar of Companies and the General Legal Council as defendants.

At the centre of his case was the claim that the Ghana Law Society had been presenting itself as a legitimate professional body with powers associated with legal regulation, including the ability to issue or renew practising certificates, pupillage licences and licences for law chambers.

He argued that the group’s public communications and media profile created the impression that it either possessed, or had somehow received, regulatory backing from the General Legal Council. In his view, that posture was misleading and risked weakening the structure set up by law to supervise professional associations.

He also relied on provisions of the registration law which, according to his reading, require strict compliance with certain thresholds before a professional body can properly be recognised, including a claim that such a body should represent at least 75 per cent of qualified members of the profession.

But before the substance of those arguments could be heard, the defendants challenged the court’s authority to entertain the case at all.

Lawyers for the second defendant argued that Section 12 of the Professional Bodies Registration Act provides a specific procedure and venue for contesting the registration of a professional body, namely an appeal to the Court of Appeal. They said that by starting the matter with a writ at the High Court, the plaintiff had ignored the very legal route created by the statute on which he based his case.

That objection was supported by the other defendants, who maintained that once the law prescribes both a remedy and a forum, a party must follow that route strictly.

Boadu’s lawyer resisted the objection by invoking Article 140(1) of the Constitution, arguing that the High Court has broad original jurisdiction in civil matters. Counsel contended that the statutory mechanism was merely an alternative remedy and could not override the constitutional authority of the High Court.

The judge disagreed.

In his ruling, Justice Addo said a litigant cannot build a case entirely on a statute and then decline to follow the procedure that same statute prescribes. Having anchored the action on NRCD 143, he said, the plaintiff was bound by the appeal process set out in Section 12.

On that basis, the court held that the High Court was not the proper venue and struck out the action for want of jurisdiction.