President John Dramani Mahama has signed the Legal Education Reform Bill (2025) into law, ending the decades-long monopoly of the Ghana School of Law over professional legal education in Ghana.

The new legislation allows accredited universities to offer professional law programmes, a move widely seen as a major shift in the country’s legal education landscape.

Speaking at the signing ceremony on Monday, the President said the reform seeks to balance access with quality assurance.

“It is to regulate legal education and ensure the highest standards… but also to open up space for more opportunities for legal education in Ghana,” he said.

The Ghana School of Law, established in 1958, has for over six decades been the sole institution authorised to run the professional law course required for admission to the Ghana Bar.

That arrangement has faced sustained criticism from students, legal practitioners and policy advocates, who argue it created a bottleneck that prevented many qualified law graduates from progressing into the profession.

Each year, hundreds of law graduates have been unable to secure admission into the school due to limited capacity, sparking protests and calls for reform.

Under the new law, universities that meet accreditation requirements set by regulatory bodies will be permitted to run professional legal training programmes, significantly expanding training capacity.

Supporters say the reform could democratise access to legal education and reduce long-standing inequalities within the system, while critics are expected to closely monitor how standards are maintained across multiple institutions.

The reform marks one of the most significant changes to Ghana’s legal education system in decades.