The Ghana School of Law (GSL) is the country's sole institution for professional legal training. For nearly seven decades, it has carried the responsibility of producing lawyers worthy of the title Barrister-at-Law and Solicitor of the Supreme Court. That responsibility is not merely institutional it is statutory. The Legal Profession Act, 1960 (Act 32), and the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018 (L.I. 2355), as amended by the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) (Amendment) Regulations, 2020 (L.I. 2427), impose precise, non-negotiable standards for professional training. Among those standards, the internship programme occupies a position of central importance.
Yet a careful examination of how the GSL currently administers the internship programme reveals something deeply troubling: the Internship on the objective standard is failing to meet the minimum statutory duration requirements and on the subjective side the system as is currently being applied, although well intended, is not beneficial to the student or the law firm. It is also being implemented to the disadvantage of fourteen of Ghana's sixteen regions.
The aim of this write-up is to highlight the flaw in the current system as is being practiced and a push for a return to the old regime where students did full time internship during vacations. The writer is not oblivious of the passage of The Legal Education Reform Bill, 2025 which is yet to be assented to. This notwithstanding by transitions of the bill those in Part 1 and 2 will still be operating within the framework of the legal framework of the Legal Profession Act, 1960 (Act 32) and L.I. 2355 as amended by L.I. 2427. This therefore makes it imperative to address lapses in the current system.
The Legal Framework for Internship
The Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018 (L.I. 2355) as amended by L.I. 2427, provides the detailed operational framework within which the GSL administers the Professional Law Course (PLC). Regulation 17 of L.I. 2355 states that “A student of the School shall, as part of the Professional Law Course, undertake internship training at an establishment approved by the Council.” Regulation 18 further stated that the internship program shall be for a period of not less than six months. A student cannot be called to the bar without undertaking this compulsory six months internship.
The Operational Framework of the Internship:
When the Internship program commenced in 2018, students were undertaking these internships during the vacations. Under the old approach, PLC students completed their academic coursework across the year of the Professional Law Course and then, during the vacation period following each year's examinations, undertook their practical placements on a full-time basis. The student arrived at the law firm, chamber, or legal department at 8:00 a.m. and left at 5:00 p.m., five days a week, for the duration of the placement. There were no lectures to attend. There were no examination scripts to revise. There was only the law firm, the clients, the files, and the supervising lawyer.
Under this model, a three-month (13-week) vacation placement at a law firm would yield: 13 weeks × 5 days = 65 working days per placement. Two three-month placements (the six-month requirement of Act 32) would yield: 130 working days. This exactly satisfies the statutory threshold
On or about 2022, the Ghana School of Law changed the system of operationalizing these internship program. They now allowed the students to conduct these internships whiles in school by spending two days in the firm or court or place of placement. It is important to mention there was no official engagement with the Bar or Firms when this change was conducted. It is the system in its current form that posses serious challenges for the student who is undergoing training.
Challenges of the Current System
Achieving the Six Months Statutory Threshold:
The statutory internship duration threshold as stated by Regulation 18 is a minimum of six months. The monthly arithmetic is stark and requires no expert to grasp. Consider a standard working month of approximately 20 working days. Thus to meet this six-month requirement a student must conduct an internship of not less than 120 working days at the barest minimum. In view of the rotational cycle of the internship a student is suppose to spend about 60 working days of internship in each cycle.
This year the official placement letters released on or about February 2026 sets out the precise structure of the 2025/2026 internship cycle. The letter states clearly:
"The period of internship is as follows:
Session 1: Monday 9th February – Thursday 2nd April, 2026
Session 2: Tuesday 7th April – Friday 22nd May, 2026
Session 3: Monday 27th July – Wednesday 16th September, 2026
During this period, the student is required to undertake the internship only on the two days above each week."
These two days internship culminates into the following working days:
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In effect the student is in short of 15 working days for his or her internship cycle in accordance with the statutes. The old system allowed for the student to cover a lot of working hours. With the current system the student is still mandated to come for only two days whiles on vacation.
Divided Mind of the Student
The concurrent model places students in an inescapable and damaging bind. They attend lectures on two days per week. They attend internship on two other days. Sessions 1 and 2 are separated by only 5 calendar days (2 April to 7 April 2026 which is essentially a long weekend break. However, Sessions 2 and 3 are separated by a gap of 66 calendar days (22 May to 27 July 2026 which is approximately 9 weeks and 3 days). During this long gap, the intern is entirely absent from the placement firm. The firm cannot build on prior work. Files accumulate. Continuity is broken. The student is left to study for examinations scheduled in June/July. When she returns in late July, she is effectively starting afresh.
Examinations loom throughout the year with the Qualifying Certificate Examination being held in June/July of each year. The practical reality is that a student whose professional qualification depends on those examinations will, naturally and rationally, prioritize examination preparation over internship engagement.
This creates a dynamic where the internship becomes, in the student's mind, a box to be ticked rather than a formative professional experience. Assignments given by supervising lawyers are completed with one eye on the lecture notes for the next day's class. The research task delegated by a partner is mentally set aside in favour of revising Evidence or Advocacy. The client interview scheduled for Thursday afternoon is overshadowed by anxiety about the Civil Procedure mock paper due Friday. This is not a character failing on the student's part, it is a structural inevitability.
No rational student, facing a professional examination whose outcome determines their entire career, will be fully present in the law firm on the two days they are allocated there.
The cognitive division required that is thinking like a law student preparing for exams while simultaneously thinking like a professional lawyer serving clients is genuinely damaging to both modes of learning.
Fourteen Regions Left Behind
Ghana has sixteen administrative regions. The Ghana School of Law maintains campuses in only two: the Greater Accra Region (at Makola, GIMPA, and UPSA) and the Ashanti Region (at the Kumasi campus, inaugurated in November 2010). All PLC students regardless of their origin must attend one of these campuses. The concurrent internship model means they must find placement firms within practical commuting distance of their campus.
The consequence is a systemic, structurally enforced exclusion of students who may want to ply their practice outside these two regions. In an era where there are challenges in getting good firms to undertake pupilage, internship serves as an opportunity for a student to understudy the firm that they intend to practice. This also adds unnecessary expense for students who do not reside in these two regions as they would have to pay for rent during vacations and fend for themselves in this unpaid internship.
The impact extends beyond geography. It reinforces a colonial legacy that located legal authority and legal practice at the seat of colonial administration which is dominantly Accra. Today, in an independent Ghana with sixteen regions, a functioning court system in every regional capital, and qualified law firms beyond the two principal cities, the GSL's concurrent internship model perpetuates the notion that legal learning belongs only in Accra or Kumasi.
This is not merely inconvenient, it is contrary to the spirit of a truly national professional training programme. It concentrates the benefit of quality practical exposure in two cities, reinforces existing inequalities in the legal market, and denies the legal professionals of Ghana's other regions the opportunity to participate in building the next generation of lawyers.
The Supervising Firm or Judge Cannot Impart Real Legal Skills
The placement letters issued by the school is not a private arrangement between a student and a firm. It is an official communication from the Ghana School of Law to a host institution. It specifies that the student 'is required to undertake the internship only on the two days above each week.' The Ghana School of Law is therefore the party that mandates the two-day-per-week attendance. The firm or court has no power to require more. The student has no mechanism to give more unless he does so out of benevolence
A law firm or judicial chamber accepts an intern with an implicit understanding that they will receive something in return for the administrative cost of supervision: a productive contributor who can be developed, assigned tasks, and eventually trusted with increasing responsibility. That developmental arc requires time, continuity, and presence.
Under the current structure, a supervising firm or judge receives an intern for only two days per week. No meaningful file can be assigned to an intern who is absent for three of every five working days. No client can be introduced to an intern who will not be present for most of the engagements that follow. No court matter can be delegated to an intern who will miss the hearing because it falls on a Monday or Tuesday. The intern arrives on Wednesday, is briefed on what happened in her absence, does whatever can be done in one day, leaves on Thursday, and is absent again until the following Wednesday. The firm or judge cannot use her effectively. The knowledge cannot be transferred. The skills cannot be built. The relationship which is the heart of the old chambering model cannot form.
Supervising lawyers particularly in smaller practices where the administrative burden of supervision falls heaviest increasingly regard GSL interns as a responsibility without a return. This breeds a culture of superficial supervision: the assessment form is completed, the envelope is sealed, the intern is discharged. Whether genuine learning occurred is a secondary consideration, because the structure does not enable it to occur in the first place.
Making the Case for reversion to full time Vacation Internship
The solution is not novel, not untested, and not complicated. It is, in fact, the model that the Ghana School of Law used before the concurrent internship was adopted and it is the model that satisfies the law, serves the student, benefits the firm, and democratizes access to legal training across the country. It is a return to the full-time, vacation-based internship: a dedicated, immersive placement conducted during the vacation period, free from the competing demands of examinations and lectures.
A student on full-time vacation internship has only one professional preoccupation: learning to be a lawyer. There are no examinations approaching, no lectures to prepare for, no cognitive split between two different modes of learning. She can be assigned a client file on Day 1 and see it through to resolution by Day 65. She can attend court, draft pleadings, negotiate settlements, attend client conferences, and observe chambers management all continuously, all with the same colleagues, all within the same institutional culture. The learning curve is steep and rewarding precisely because it is uninterrupted. This is how professional lawyers learn: through immersion, repetition, and continuity.
A law firm with a full-time intern can genuinely integrate that intern into its operations. Files can be assigned, letters delegated, research tasks completed, court attendances scheduled all with the confidence that the intern will be present to follow through. Junior partners can invest time in genuine mentorship, knowing they will see the fruits of that investment over the course of three months. The administrative cost of supervision is absorbed by the actual professional output the intern delivers.
The legal profession benefits from lawyers who have genuinely undergone practical training, not lawyers who have technically completed a programme that delivered less than a third of its promised substance. The Bar interview that follows the internship which under the GSL's own description determines eligibility for call can only be meaningful if the internship itself has been substantive. A profession that admits lawyers whose practical training was superficial is a profession that will struggle to maintain standards.