General News of Friday, 2 October 2015

Source: tv3network.com

Prof Asare: Sue Ghana Law School if denied admission

Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare

US-based Ghanaian law professor, Stephen Kwaku Asare has asked students who were denied admission into the Ghana School of Law to proceed to court to stop the School from starting lectures on Monday.

Prof. Asare, who has consistently criticized the School over its admission procedure, said the 50 students who passed the School's entrance exam but were not given admission to pursue the Professional Law Course to seek a restraining order before lectures starts on Monday.

"The 50 students who have been denied admission should immediately apply for an injunction restraining the School from starting lectures on Monday until they have been giving clear and convincing reasons why they are not being allowed in the School even after "passing" the dreaded Entrance Exam," he advised in a Facebook post.

A holder of LLB cannot practice law in Ghana until he has obtained a Qualifying Certificate in Law from any of the three campuses of the Ghana School of Law. over 1000 law students graduating from various universities across the country annually but only 250 make it to the Law School.

The legal scholar who is on record to have described the admission process as not being transparent, fair and rational, said, "there is something gravely wrong with this admission process".

He said he does not understand why Ghana can only admit 251 students into the Law School when Kenya and Nigeria are admitting 1,500 and 5,000 respectively, and called for an overhaul of the Ghana Legal Council because it has outlived its usefulness.

"The General Legal Council has outlived its usefulness, and it is time to shake its very foundations... We must not wait for another Anas video to fix this cancer," he stated.

In August this year, Prof. Asare asked the Ghana School of Law to provide candidates who wrote the school's entrance exam with their actual scores, because it was unacceptable that only 298 of the 875 students who took the 2015 Law School Entrance Exam know their score.

He said the General Legal Council does not define what a passing score is, but rather post scores of only students who are admitted to pursue the Qualifying Certificate in Law at the three Ghana School of Law campuses.

"Getting the score is not just a matter of right but also it has feedback value. A student who gets 65 will have to adopt completely different strategies from a student who got 28, if they opt to retake the examination," he had said.

He underscored the need for the various Law Faculties to add an extra year beyond the Legum Baccalaureus where students are trained for the professional law course and exam instead of the current process.