Why a law student has sued the General Legal Council

A student at the Ghana School of Law, Gertrude Quayson, has sued the body that oversees professional legal education and training in Ghana, seeking, among others, a declaration that she has the right to know of the treatment given to her examination scripts by the examiner.

According to her writ of summons signed by Albert Quashigah of the Sustineri Attorneys, Gertrude avers that she participated in the 2022-2023 Professional June Qualifying Certificate Examination with the diligence she had always attached to her exams.

However, when the results were published on the school’s notice board, she did not find her name under any of the categories used for such publications.

The plaintiff says that when this happened, she suspected that there might be an omission or some errors concerning the publication, which did not show her name as a successful candidate.

Subsequently, Gertrude notes that a link was sent to students to select their campuses for Part II of the Law School program, but she could not have access to the portal to do the same.

Additionally, Gertrude indicates that the raw scores of the examination were sent to students via email, but she did not receive any such message.

Also, she tried to fill out the form to select the campuses but proved futile and thus followed up with the school in Accra to find out why she was facing such a challenge coupled with her non-receipt of her exam raw scores too.

It was at that time, when she went to the school’s IT department, that she found out that she had actually failed all the papers except one and was advised to repeat as a result.

She then demanded the raw scores from the IT department, which she was given, and the same was confirmed upon her second check with the records office.

Being in a state of shock, she wrote to the Independent Examination Committee and requested a review of her scripts but this was not done.

The plaintiff indicates that the registrar rather advised her to resort to the only procedure, which is to pay an amount for each of the five papers to be remarked.

She again wrote to the IEC and the Registrar, requesting her unpublished results be published in the same manner as those for her colleague at the school but did not receive any formal response.

The plaintiff, Gertrude, then followed up with the registrar and was directed to the secretariat of the IEC, where it was re-echoed that the only internal procedure was remarking, contrary to a review as the law stipulates.

Subsequently, she engaged a lawyer who wrote to the GLC and the IEC on her concerns but only the IEC has responded as at the time of issuing the writ.

Gertrude is thus seeking, among others;

A declaration that under Rule 33 sub-regulation 2 of LI 2355 as amended by LI 2427, a review does not only mean remarking.

Also, a declaration that review, as used in the law, includes other processes such as the GLC acting through the IEC and directing each course lecturer to relook at her marked scripts against the scheme and making corrections and re-allocation of marks.

An order directed at the GLC to recall all her scripts and review and publish the same after the process.