John Dramani Mahama has signed the Legal Education Reform Bill (2025) into law, ending the 66-year monopoly held by the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education in the country.
The new legislation allows accredited universities to offer professional law programmes, marking a major shift in Ghana’s legal education system and addressing long-standing concerns over limited access to professional legal training.
The reform has been widely advocated by legal educators, students, and policy reform campaigners who argued that the previous structure created significant barriers for aspiring lawyers.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, President Mahama stated that the legislation seeks to strike a balance between expanding access and maintaining high academic and professional standards within the legal profession.
According to him, the law is intended not only to regulate legal education effectively but also to create broader opportunities for legal training across the country.
For decades, critics of the existing system argued that the Ghana School of Law’s exclusive control over professional legal training created severe capacity constraints, leaving many qualified law graduates unable to continue their path toward admission to the Bar.
Established in 1958, the Ghana School of Law had remained the sole institution authorised to provide the professional law course required for entry into the Ghana Bar Association.
Under the new legal framework, universities that satisfy accreditation requirements set by the appropriate regulatory authorities will now be permitted to offer professional legal training programmes.
The reform is expected to significantly expand training capacity, improve access to legal education, and reduce the longstanding bottleneck that has affected legal graduates for years.
Analysts say the move could reshape Ghana’s legal education landscape by decentralising professional training while increasing competition, accessibility, and institutional participation within the sector.
