We are fighting over license and advertisement when our legal opportunities are being taken over by laymen preparing legal documents under our very noses with no action.
Contractors enter into construction contracts and make millions of cedis without lawyers and nothing is done to secure that kind of business for [ads1]lawyers. Young lawyers can’t even get LA to do in order to make some money whilst they learn. Ordinary court clerks have taken over such business.
Surveyors have taken over preparation of indentures and amazingly get some old desperate lawyers to endorse it as if it was prepared by them and nothing is done about it. At the end of the day it is the Lawyer who is losing his daily bread without any effort on the part of the General Legal Council (GLC) or the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) to try to secure all of these separate legal opportunities for Lawyers. And as if that is not enough we now have the GBA whose duty it is to fight and protect the interest of Lawyers lying in bed with the GLC and fighting the very lawyers they are supposed to fight for and protect.
We have GBA executives sitting on the judicial council and judges sitting on GLC committees intermarrying themselves and scheming ways to protect their interest as against that of the general interest of Lawyers.
Let’s join the campaign to get rid of judges sitting on GLC committees and stop this unnecessary intermarriage between the GLC and the GBA.
You can imagine a High Court judge faced with the problem of having to quash a decision of the GLC that has been taken by Appeal Court and Supreme Court judges sitting on the said GLC committee. You don’t put impediment in the way of effective and quality Justice. Justice must not only be done but must manifestly be seen to be done and the supreme Court which clearly stated this must be seen to be avoiding impediments in the delivery of effective and quality Justice.
Say No to Appeal Court and Supreme Court judges sitting on ordinary GLC Committees. Common sense even shows that they are too big to sit on such committees. They don’t need to be there. The GLC can effectively do it’s job without them.
Indeed it is bizarre to know that when a lawyer prepares a legal document without his license the document is null and void but if a layman should prepare the same document it is valid. Such bizarre decisions will not stop coming from the Supreme Court until we divorce the GLC and the GBA.
Why will the supreme Court allow the GLC to continue to conduct exams when the same Supreme Court has declared the examination as unconstitutional but the very same Supreme Court stopped the District Assembly elections on grounds that it was unconstitutional when the aspiring Assembly Members had spent millions of cedis in advertising and campaigns.
Is the GLC more important than the Assembly Members?? The Supreme Court will not stop treating the GLC with kid gloves until the GLC, the GBA and the judges are completely divorced from each other.
#DivorceGLCandtheGBA
#GetRidofJudgesSitting onGLCCommittees
#QualityJusticeForAllIncludingLawyers
By A concerned Lawyer
