President John Dramani Mahama has officially signed the Legal Education Reform Bill (2025) into law, effectively breaking the 66-year monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education.
This landmark legislation introduces a decentralised model that empowers accredited universities to offer professional law programmes for the first time in the nation’s history.
During the signing ceremony on Monday, May, 11, 2026, the President emphasised that the new framework was meticulously designed to balance the expansion of access with the preservation of academic excellence.
He noted that the primary objective is to “regulate legal education and ensure the highest standards in terms of legal education, but also to open up a space for more opportunities for legal education in Ghana.”
Acknowledging the long-standing demand for reform, he added that “this particular act has been one that many aspiring lawyers have been looking up to. So it’ll be fine.”
Since its inception in 1958, the Ghana School of Law has functioned as the sole institution authorised to provide the professional training necessary for admission to the Ghana Bar.
This centralised system often resulted in significant bottlenecks for thousands of LLB graduates.
Under the revised legal framework, universities that satisfy the rigorous accreditation requirements established by relevant regulatory bodies will now be eligible to conduct professional training, a shift expected to significantly increase capacity and modernise the sector.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
