Private universities setting up law faculties just for money – Sam Okudzeto

A member of the Council of State and disciplinary committee member of the general legal council has accused private universities of setting up law faculties with the sole aim of making money.

According to him, the situation is affecting the quality of students seeking to be lawyers in the country.

“Many private universities have set up law faculties because they think it’s a money making business. I’m afraid the academic standards are getting lower and lower and the general legal Council cannot inflict that kind of damage on the innocent public,” he told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr.

The comments come after the criticisms that have greeted the chief justice’s position that she will not allow the mass production of lawyers in Ghana.

“Those of us who have been too long on the General Legal Council, those of us who spent too long on the disciplinary committee, we have cause to worry because the kinds of misconduct are such that there is no way anybody envisaged these categories of misconduct when the Legal Profession Act was being enacted in the 1960s,” the Chief Justice said while addressing the Bench, Bar and Faculty Conference at the Labadi Beach Hotel.

Focusing on her concerns about legal education in Ghana, Justice Sophia Akuffo further stated that, “Those of you lawyers and those of you lecturers who are busy advocating free scale, mass admissions into the professional law course, and mass production of lawyers, be careful what you wish for.”

She further pointed out, “So long as I have anything to do with it, it won’t happen.

“Just like you can’t mass produce doctors and surgeons, Ghanaians must not have mass produced lawyers imposed on them”.