Why AG seeks to introduce the Legal Practitioners Standards Board Bill

Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, has announced plans to introduce legislation aimed at strengthening professional standards and creating an independent system for handling complaints against lawyers.

The proposed Legal Practitioners Standards Board Bill will establish a statutory body responsible for setting and maintaining standards of professional conduct and continuing competence within Ghana’s legal profession.

Announcing the proposed reform at the Ghana Bar Association Conference, Dr Ayine said the Board would operate independently of his office and the Executive.

Under the Bill, a separately constituted Disciplinary Committee would be created within the Board to receive, investigate and determine complaints against legal practitioners.

The committee would include both professional and non-professional representatives. Its members would have security of tenure, while disciplinary cases would be handled under clearly defined and time-bound procedures.

Dr Ayine said separating disciplinary proceedings from the Board’s licensing and standard-setting responsibilities would reinforce the credibility of the regulatory system.

The proposed legislation would also provide safeguards for lawyers who face disciplinary proceedings. Practitioners would have the right to know the allegations against them, respond to the case, receive proportionate sanctions and appeal decisions before the courts.

According to the Attorney-General, these protections are intended to prevent the disciplinary system from being used to harass lawyers by clients, competitors, judges or the State.

He rejected suggestions that the proposal could place the regulation of lawyers under political control, arguing that its purpose was to secure the profession’s independence through legislation.

“A regulator that answers to no one but the standards it is charged with upholding is the only kind of regulator that can credibly discipline a profession whose members must, from time to time, stand up to the government of the day,” he said.

The draft Bill will undergo consultations involving the leadership of the Ghana Bar Association, the General Legal Council and other relevant stakeholders before it is submitted to Cabinet and subsequently laid before Parliament.

Dr Ayine said he expected the Bar to subject the proposed law to rigorous scrutiny, noting that it was preferable for potential weaknesses to be identified before the legislation reached Parliament rather than during its implementation.

The Attorney-General also linked the proposal to the government’s wider reform of legal education and professional regulation.

He described the Standards Board Bill as the second part of reforms that began with the Legal Education Act, 2026 (Act 1170), which sought to widen access to the legal profession and modernise the route from legal education to qualification.

While the Legal Education Act addresses how people enter the profession, Dr Ayine said the proposed Bill would govern how lawyers maintain professional standards after qualification and how disciplinary complaints against them are resolved.