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The time is now for our local law school
Dear Editor,
The Guyana Times Editorial “For a Guyana Law School” (13.08.15) supports a position that I have advocated in these pages. Yet, the content of the Editorial is misleading in many regards. One of the tenets of journalism is to pursue the truth wherever it leads, and the Times’ Editorial embraces the kind of revisionist journalism that mars a most noble profession.
The Editorial characterizes the idea of a local law school as the “Jagdeo proposal” which emerged somewhere around 2002. What the Editorial does not say is that it is the same Jagdeo regime which held the reins of power since that time to May last, and besides putting a Committee in place to flesh out the idea, no serious headway has been made.
What the Editorial also omits is that the then government represented in the Office of the Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney General Mohabir Anil Nandlall, was later vehemently opposed to the idea of a local law school, not only on the basis that it would be a costly undertaking, but also on the basis that it would lead to a saturation of the local market, a very linear approach to solving the issue.
When the perennial issue of Guyanese admittance to the Hugh Wooding Law School was raised last year, we were told that a committee was again looking at the issue and the viability of a local law school. What has become of that initiative?
Against the silhouette of International Youth Day, we keep telling our youths that they can be anything they choose to be, but in Guyana this is not exactly true, especially as it regards the vocation of Law and being trained as a lawyer. What we have been seeing year after year is youths with a greater appetite for learning the law, but the constraints of space in our own undergraduate law programme limits their admission, even though in recent years the Department of Law has been pushing the proverbial envelope.
Likewise, the Top 25 Automatic Placement arrangement also restricts the number of those persons who wish to pursue the post graduate Certificate of Legal Education, a prerequisite to practice before the local bar and regionally. This is an untenable situation that must be remedied post-haste if our people are to truly be all that they can be.
Trinidad’s position has always been clear, that the Council for Legal Education’s “solution to the problem was not planning to create additional places but instead to restrict the numbers of persons to be admitted to practice as lawyers, thereby denying law students their right to further their professional careers.” (Report on the Development of Legal Education and the Practice of Law in the Caribbean Community: Comments of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago)
Additionally, they have said, “The failure of the institutions to anticipate and meet the demand for legal education has seriously prejudiced the legal systems of the Caribbean and has seriously disadvantaged the current generation of young aspiring lawyers.”
If the Guyana Times must agree with anyone, let it agree with the Legal Affairs Committee, a body of CARICOM, that “these institution are unable to meet the demands for legal education”. (Recommendations of the Legal Affairs Committee (LAC) at its Fourth Special Meeting, Grenada, 2-4 June 1999, Regarding the Report of the Committee of Experts on the Development of Legal Education and the Practice of Law in the Caribbean Community and Comments of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago thereon)
The time is now for our local law school.
Sherod Avery Duncan
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