Sam Okudzeto says GBA was not consulted in passage of Legal Education reform bill
Speaking on PM Express on Joy News, Okudzeto said it was deeply troubling that the Ghana Bar Association was not brought into discussions on legislation that directly affects how lawyers are trained
Former Ghana Bar Association president Sam Okudzeto has criticised the passage of the Legal Education Bill, 2025, arguing that Parliament pushed through a major reform of the legal profession without properly involving the profession itself.
His concern is not centred only on the content of the new law, but on the process that produced it.
Speaking on PM Express on Joy News, Okudzeto said it was deeply troubling that the Ghana Bar Association was not brought into discussions on legislation that directly affects how lawyers are trained and how the profession is structured going forward.
In his view, the omission is difficult to justify given the role of the GBA as the recognised body representing lawyers across the country.
Parliament approved the bill last week, clearing the way for one of the most significant changes to Ghana’s legal education system in years. The law removes the Ghana School of Law’s exclusive control over professional legal training, permits accredited universities to offer that training, and creates a Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate the system and supervise a new national bar examination framework.
For Okudzeto, however, the broader policy shift should have been shaped with direct input from practitioners.
He argued that the GBA is not a narrow or regionally confined institution, but a national professional body with a structure that reflects lawyers from across Ghana through regional representation on its council. That, he said, should have made it an obvious stakeholder in any legislative process touching legal education and professional standards.
He suggested that some effort had been made to engage Parliament, but said those attempts did not yield any meaningful access. According to him, a request was made for the Association to appear before the relevant parliamentary body, yet that opportunity never materialised.
By the time the Association became aware of the outcome, he indicated, the law had already been passed.
Okudzeto’s criticism goes beyond disappointment over being left out. He framed the issue as one of principle, insisting that when Parliament is dealing with legislation affecting a profession, the professional body concerned ought to be consulted as a matter of good legislative practice.
His remarks add to the growing debate over the reform, which supporters say will widen access to legal training, but which critics fear may have been pursued without sufficient stakeholder buy-in.
