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0 Supreme Court Justice nominee, Kweku T. Ackaah-Boafo, has expressed deep concern over the shortage of legal practitioners in Ghana, calling for the urgent training of more lawyers to meet the evolving demands of the country’s justice system.
Appearing before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Friday, 20 June, Mr Ackaah-Boafo delivered a historical perspective on the legal profession, highlighting the slow growth in the number of trained lawyers despite Ghana’s expanding population.
Between 1877 and 1963, there were 570 lawyers in Ghana. I mentioned 1877 because of the Judicature Act,” he noted.
He continued: “From 1962 till now, as of May 2015, I think the lawyers from 1962 to 2025 are about 10,400. So, in total, lawyers in Ghana will be about 11,000. From the Ghana Bar Association portal, as I asked around, practising lawyers will be about 8,000 — so there are not enough lawyers in Ghana.”
Mr Ackaah-Boafo observed that the country’s legal population ratio remains far from ideal.
“If you look at our population, you will have about 2,000 people to a lawyer,” he said, adding, “I think that something ought to be done.”
He endorsed the ongoing call to decentralise legal education to broaden access, but urged that the process be handled with care and proper oversight.
“I believe decentralisation of legal education is important, but we must be cautious in how we go about it,” he said.
The nominee’s remarks echo wider sentiments within the legal fraternity, where stakeholders have consistently raised concerns about the bottlenecks in legal education and access to justice across Ghana.
