Council of Legal Education to set up task force on local law school
Stabroek News
September 10, 2002
The Council of Legal Education (CLE) is to set up a task force to work with the authorities here on the establishment of a local law school offering a legal education programme that would allow its graduates to practice in the courts of Guyana. If the council accredits the local law school, then the graduates would be entitled to practice before the courts in the region and the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Attorney General, Doodnauth Singh, who represented Guyana at last weekend's meeting of the CLE in St Kitts, told Stabroek News that he informed the council of the government's intention to set up a law school. After some discussion, he said, it was agreed that a task force representing the council would work with the local task force to look at the arrangements.
The Attorney General said that though no names were decided he hoped that it would include Denis Morrison, Lloyd Barnett, the dean of the Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies and a representative from the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad.
Last month, Cabinet accepted a concept paper on the establishment of a law school, which was prepared by the Law Department of the University of Guyana at the behest of the Attorney General. That paper envisages the school being operational by the next academic year.
The government's decision came after it chose to discontinue paying the economic cost of the tuition for Guyanese nationals enrolled at Hugh Wooding and took into consideration the restriction on the number of UG law graduates who are eligible for automatic entry to Hugh Wooding. Only 25 UG law graduates are granted automatic entry under the collaborative agreement, which provides for the LLB programme to be supervised by the University of the West Indies.
This year some 15 UG law graduates will be unable to enrol at Hugh Wooding unless they are successful at the open entrance examination for the available places after the quotas allocated to other territories are taken up. The entrance examination was introduced because of overcrowding at Hugh Wooding.
Meanwhile, some 58 students including 13 non-Guyanese have enrolled for the first year of the LL.B programme. Their registration was delayed to allow for a review of the admission criteria.