Legal Education Reform Bill risks politicising legal education — NAPO

The 2024 Vice Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, known affectionately as NAPO, has criticised the Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025, describing it as worrying.

According to the former Manhyia South lawmaker, the bill creates room for political control over legal education in the country.

“The Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025 is worrying. Legal education must remain the core mandate of the General Legal Council, with government providing support, not direction, in line with global best practice,” he wrote in a social media post on Monday, December 22.

“The future of Ghana’s legal profession must be protected, and the training of lawyers should never be subordinated to political control,” he added.

The Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025 proposes changes aimed at expanding access to legal education while maintaining high standards in teaching, learning and outcomes.

The bill seeks to separate the regulation of legal education from the regulation of the legal profession, while strengthening the role of the bar association in setting and enforcing standards.

Under the bill, professional legal education and training would be transferred from the Ghana School of Law to accredited universities.

It also introduces a Law Practice Training Course to be run by these universities to prepare candidates for a National Bar Examination.

The course will focus largely on clinical legal education, with emphasis on practical lawyering skills rather than purely theoretical instruction.

Applicants with a Bachelor of Laws degree or another approved first degree in law will be required to apply to an accredited university for the Law Practice Training Course before becoming eligible to sit for the National Bar Examination.