Don’t block people from legal profession – Amnesty International

The Director of Amnesty International (AI) Ghana, Robert Akoto Amoafo, has said that the majority of Ghanaians do not get access to lawyers due to the limited number of lawyers in the country.

To that end, he has said no measure should be put in place to block persons from entering the legal profession.

His comment comes after angry students of Ghana Law School expressed misgivings regarding the results of the 2017 Bar exams in which only 91 students out of 474 students, representing 19 percent of the total students passed.

The students on Wednesday, 21 February 2018, wore red armed bands to protest against the development.

Out of the 474 students who wrote the exams, a total of 206 are to repeat the entire course after failing. Another 177 students have been referred in one or two papers.

The Student Representative Council (SRC) of GLS is convinced the results could not have been the true reflection of the exams written by the students.

The SRC is therefore demanding remarking of all the failed papers with a drastic reduction in the remarking fee from GHS3000 to GHS500.



Speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of the Ghana Yensom show on Accra 100.5FM on Friday, 23 February 2018, Mr Amoafo said: “This is very disturbing and that is why we want to talk about this to create the awareness.”



He added: “Approximately, we have 2000 lawyers available for of all of us in the country.” This he said is inadequate and so “don’t put measures that will block people from coming into the profession. So we are pleading with the General Legal Council, the government and parliament to take a critical look at this situation.”