Tsikata’s prodigy, Lawyer Dr. Sai, floors Godfred Dame again, as he wins case against Akufo-Addo.

Fast rising Lawyer and young Academic Justice Sai, is no mean individual. Justice Srem-Sai who was called to the Ghana Bar in 2011. He has postgraduate law degrees from Cardiff Law School (2014) and Harvard Law School (2014), where he did research into International Human Rights Law and Corporate Law, Governance and Finance, respectively.

He teaches Commercial Law; Legal Environment of Business; Intellectual Property Law; Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility; and International Human Rights Law. Prior to joining the GIMPA Law Faculty, Mr. Srem-Sai worked as Associate with the law firm of Atuguba & Associates.

He has also worked with SAB Miller plc (owners of Accra Brewery Limited and Voltic Ghana Limited) as Legal and Regulatory Affairs Manager. Mr. Srem-Sai’s areas of research, practice and publication include, corporate governance, parliamentary oversight and governance, disability rights and social care law.

Fast Rising and young Lawyer Sai and colleague, after the legal victory

He has delivered lectures on topics in these areas across the world. He also has a keen interest in commercial litigation and from this ever inspiring trajectory, destined for the top, he keeps on shining in law practice as well, as many have associated him with the luminary, Lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata, a man, he was seen in court, as his junior lawyer, during the election petition hearing, earlier this year.

Many will recall, how as a probono lawyer, Dr. Justice Srem Sai floored renowned Godfred Dame. The details of the historic win, which may have eventually forced the Ghana Police and Attorney General, to eventually allow the #FixTheCountry demonstrations, despite several failed attempts initially are as follows:

The Supreme Court had quashed an order by the Accra High Court restraining the #FixTheCountry movement from going on demonstration, in a unanimous decision on Tuesday the 8th June, 2021, as a five-member panel of the apex court held that the High Court exceeded its jurisdiction by making the restraining order to last indefinite, as #FixTheCountry group, were led by the fast rising Lawyer Dr. Justice Srem Sai.

According to the court, by the operation of law, the order which was secured ex parte by the police on May 6, 2021 is supposed to last for 10days, and therefore the High Court acted in error by making it indefinite. The court gave the ruling Tuesday after upholding in part a certiorari application by the #FixTheCountry Movement. The five -member panel was presided over by Justice Yaw Appau, with Justices Mariama Owusu, Lovelace Johnson, Clemence Honyenuga and Prof Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu.

Defeated Godfred Dame and Police Command Officer, who represented Ghana Police leaving Supreme Court

Well, fast forward, the fast rising Lawyer, who most recently as few days ago, had successfully studies for and awarded a Doctorate Degree in Jurisprudence, has won another landmark case, against the President and Attorney General, Godfred Dame.

It may be recalled that on April 6, 2020, Mr Francis Kwarteng Arthur, a private legal practitioner, went to the High Court to challenge the President’s order contained in Executive Instrument (EI) Number 63 as well as the manner in which the order was being implemented. This suit, was by Lawyer Dr. Justice Srem Sai, who was the applicants legal counsel. 

EI 63 orders all telecommunication network and service providers to handover the personal information of all customers and subscribers to the President. The President’s reason for making CI 63, according to the Attorney-General, was to conduct contact-tracing to control the spread of the deadly covid-19.

Since the passing of the EI 63 in March 2020, the personal information of millions of mobile phone service subscribers has been collected and given to a private company, Kelni GVG.

Counsel for the applicant, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, argued, among others, that “EI 63 offends the permissible limitation clause of the Constitution … and that the mechanism that EI 63 deploys is extremely disproportionate to the intended purpose.”

The defendants in the case are the Attorney-General, the National Communication Authority (NCA), Vodafone Ghana, MTN Ghana and Kelni GVG.

In a 70-page judgement delivered in Accra on July 22, 2021, the court held that the President’s actions violate and continue to violate the right to privacy. The court, presided over by Mrs Justice Rebecca Sittie, also directed the government to delete all such data and submit a report to the Registrar of the High Court within 14 days. The court ordered Vodafone, the NCA and Kelni GVG to pay damages of GH¢ 20,000 each to the applicant.

It is worth noting that, Lawyer Dr. Justice Srem Sai, has also played a pivotal role, already in the sanity, that has been brought to the law education, as many will recall the national discourse that had ensued after many failed Makola entrance laws.

In an article he had authored, asserted that”

“The Ghana School of Law is the only institution that issues Qualifying Certificate to persons to practice law in Ghana. It currently has three campuses – two in Accra and one in Kumasi. The School is controlled by the Board of Legal Education. The Board is a sub-body of the General Legal Council. The General Legal Council is the statutory body bearing the overall responsibility for organizing legal education in Ghana.

The General Legal Council, by its establishing law, The Legal Profession Act, 1960 (Act 32), is also responsible for upholding standards of lawyers’ professional conduct. By this, the body has a mandate to determine the number of persons who are enrolled at the Ghana bar.

As from January 1, 1971, no person could become a lawyer without having obtained a degree from a recognized university. Even though the type of degree is not stipulated by the law, the practice now is that a person may not be qualified to enroll as a lawyer, unless she holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from a university recognized by the General Legal Council.

Therefore, legal education almost invariably entails university education for the LL.B degree, mostly in the universities, and a subsequent practical or professional training course in the Ghana School of Law. There was a time, when the debate over whether the General Legal Council’s mandate to organize legal education in Ghana extended to cover legal education towards the attainment of law degrees, even in the academic institutions.

In other words, does ‘legal education’ as used in Act 32 include education towards the attainment of an academic degree in law? That was the time, year 2003, immediately before the Faculty of Law of University of Ghana, lost the monopoly over the award of LLB degree in Ghana. This question generated soft tension between the some (who would wanted the question to be answered in the affirmative) and others, the new universities arguably led by KNUST, (who wanted the question to be answered in favour of a narrow meaning of ‘legal education’).

The question was answered: Legal education within the intendment of Act 32 means professional (rather than academic) legal education. The General Legal Council, its Board of Legal Education and its Ghana School of Law do not have any power over how the universities administer their academic law degree programs. This answer also means that the General Legal Council does not have a role to play in determining the number of LL.B. holders the universities churn out.

The ’250:1000’ Problem

It is exactly the answer to this very important question that marks the beginning of the ‘problem’ which engages the attention of some “respected” lawyers and law teachers last week. While the General Legal Council and its Ghana School of Law cease to have a role to play in determining how many persons are awarded LL.B. degrees from the universities, it retains the mandate to determine the number of persons who are enrolled as lawyers in Ghana.

The effect of the change is that, whereas the pre-2003 regime puts the enrolment scrutiny at the entry (LL.B.) stage in the universities, the post-2003 regime places it at the exit (professional training) stage at the Ghana School of Law.

In other words, the same complaints being raised today would still have been raised in the pre-2003 regime, but against the universities at the LL.B. admissions stage. than against the Ghana School of Law at the qualifying certificate stage of the of legal education process.

No one, as far as my reading goes, sums up the views of the “respected” lawyers better than Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare, a Term Professor of Accounting at the University of Florida. He writes:

“The various Law School Faculties (sic) graduate over 1,000 students with the Legum Baccalaureus (LLB) annually but the Ghana School of Law (GSL) has facilities to accommodate only 250 of them to pursue the professional law course. Most, if not everyone, who matriculate in the LLB program want the professional qualification.”

The Accounting Professor continues:

“In consequence, the students have to incur cost to take an entrance exam, attend an interview and endure all kinds of emotional distress.”

Then he proposed a solution to crown it:

“All of these can be avoided by allowing the various Law Faculties to add an extra year beyond the Legum Baccalaureus where students are trained for the professional law course and exam. The function of the GSL should then be reduced to administering the Bar Exam, which should be administered twice a year.”

Professor Asare’s proposition attracted a huge support within the blogosphere. Not surprising, it also found enormous support from the mammoth army of LL.B holders and candidates, who know very well that their passage from the wells to the bar depends on how wide the General Legal Council, is willing to open the valve at the Ghana Law School.

Faulty Diagnosis

A careful reading of the proposition above would disclose that Prof. Asare and, to some extent, his army of disciples attribute the problem to inadequate “facilities” at the Ghana School of Law to accommodate or train all the thousands of LLB holders that are churned out from the universities.

Indeed, want of facilities might have been a part of the problem at a point in time; but certainly not now. It is, therefore very unfortunate for one to continue to propose a solution, that is based on the simple assumption that the General Legal Council, is unable to provide the needed facilities. This is the beginning of the fault in the respect lawyers’ proposition.

The General Legal Council is a profession-regulating body. All professional bodies are not minded just of their duty to regulate standards of professional conduct of their members, they are also very much interested in regulating the number of persons who are allowed to practice the profession.

This is because number, as it were, has a direct effect on how the standards fare. There is a myriad of reasons why profession-regulating bodies, like the General Legal Council, would control the numbers. Suffice it to say, however, that the 250:1000 problem has more to do with the unwillingness (rather than inability) of the General Legal Council to increase the population of lawyers in the country. Thus, clearly, the problem was substantially misdiagnosed.

Faulty Solution

The cliché has always been the suggestion that the General Legal Council should deinstitutionalize the professional training aspect of legal education. In other words the General Legal Council should stop running a school and cede its professional training programs over to the universities and other institutions of training.

This proposition, if accepted, would lead to the dissolution of the Board of Legal Education and the closure of the Ghana School of Law, since General Legal Council would have no ‘legal education’ function. It would lead to the establishment of a body, probably called, the board of legal examination instead.

The proposition, no doubt, copies the system in the United States, where persons who want to enrol at the various State bars take their professional training together with their academic law training at the universities and other training institutions.

In such jurisdictions, aspiring lawyers only come into contact with the licensing authorities when they are ready to take the bar exam. Indeed this regime, too, works perfectly or even better. However, it is one thing saying that the deinstitutionalized regime works perfectly and entirely another saying that it is a solution to the 250:1000 problem.

No one could deny that all profession-regulating bodies everywhere, like the General Legal Council, do limit enrolment. Deinstitutionalized profession-regulating bodies, too, limit enrolment. It is, therefore, very curious how the 250:1000 problem, which is mainly a result of the General Legal Council’s unwillingness (rather than inability) to increase enrolment, could be resolved by merely transferring the entire legal education process to the universities.

Offloading the training program to the universities, would at best, only defer the predicaments of the lawyer-aspirant. As a matter of fact, it appears that that move is even more likely to exacerbate the plight of the law-aspirant.

This is because, she will have to bear the heavy cost of having an additional year(s) of legal training, only for the General Legal Council to still slam the bar door on her by picking just 250 of her cohorts for enrolment as lawyers. While under the current arrangement, she would not incur the extra year(s)’ cost of legal education (beyond the LLB) until she is sure that she will, of course, subject to her passing the bar exams, be enrolled.