AG announces Legal Practitioners Standards Board Bill to regulate, discipline lawyers
Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, has disclosed plans to establish an independent regulatory framework to oversee professional standards and disciplinary matters within Ghana’s legal profession.
The proposed Legal Practitioners Standards Board Bill is intended to create a statutory body that will operate independently of the Attorney General’s Office and the government.
Dr Ayine made this known in a statement delivered on his behalf by Deputy Attorney General Dr Justice Srem-Sai at the opening of the Bar Conference.
He explained that the proposed board would be responsible for setting and maintaining professional conduct and continuing competence standards for lawyers. A separate disciplinary committee would receive, investigate and determine complaints against legal practitioners.
“The body will be at arm’s length from my office and from the government. Its function shall be to set and maintain the standard of professional conduct and continuing competence expected of every legal practitioner in this country,” he said.
The Attorney General said the legislation would also protect lawyers involved in disciplinary proceedings by guaranteeing them access to the allegations against them, an opportunity to be heard and the right to challenge sanctions before the courts.
He said the safeguards were necessary to ensure that disciplinary procedures could not be exploited by clients, competitors, judges or the government to intimidate or harass lawyers.
“That way, no lawyer in our beloved country need ever fear that the disciplinary process can be turned into an instrument of harassment by clients, a competitor, or the bench, or indeed by the government,” he said.
Dr Ayine rejected suggestions that the proposed reform would expose lawyers to political interference, insisting that its purpose was to achieve the opposite.
“This reform is not an attempt by the government to bring the disciplinary proceedings of lawyers under political control. It is quite the opposite,” he said.
He said the proposed arrangement would remove disciplinary oversight from direct government control and give the Ghana Bar Association and the wider legal profession a stronger role in managing professional regulation.
The Attorney General therefore urged the Bar to protect the independence of the proposed body, stressing that a credible and autonomous regulatory system was vital to preserving the integrity of the legal profession.
“A regulator that answers to no one by the standards it is charged with upholding. It is only this kind of regulator that we believe can credibly discipline the profession whose members must from time to time stand up to the government of the day,” he added.