Guyana will persevere with “greater tenacity” to establish own law school – AG Nandlall

…believes role of CLE should be changed from regulatory to accreditation body

There have been mounting calls for Guyana to establish its own law school not only to cater to the increasing demands for the legal profession in the Caribbean but also to ease the financial burden Guyanese students are faced with in order to study at one of the regional law schools.

With the country’s booming oil and gas sector, Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall believes that the time has come for Guyana to move in this direction. For decades, Guyana and other Caribbean countries have been lobbying for alternatives to the three regional law schools – the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago, and the Eugene Dupuch Law School in The Bahamas.
These three law schools are operated by the Council of Legal Education (CLE) which was established to provide training in the region rather than in Britain to persons wishing to practice as lawyers in the region. The CLE does this through the issuance of the Legal Education Certificate (LEC) – a prerequisite to practise as an Attorney-at-Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

Greater tenacity
Nandlall expressed this view in a short article titled: “After 50 Golden Years: What Next”. The piece was published recently in the CLE’s 50th Anniversary Magazine.
“Guyana, now an oil-producing nation and with the increase in economic and commercial activities that are anticipated to flow therefrom, will continue to persevere with even greater tenacity for the establishment of a law school in its jurisdiction”, he asserted. While there is no doubt that the current system for training lawyers has worked, Nandlall reasoned that any system, after five decades, is due for review to ensure that it meets the exigent needs of a dynamic world.

He said that in the last 50 years, there have been transformative changes in the world, especially in the Caribbean, noting that there has been a revolution in terms of information and technology.

Formidable challenges
According to him, this has impacted every sphere of human life, including the education system with the three law schools disseminating tuition online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But this, he noted, is just a mere example of the rapid changes that have been taking place which would have been impossible to visualise 50 years ago.
He highlighted that over the last five decades, the CLE has not been without formidable challenges, prominent among them being the attempt to meet the increasing demands for legal education in the Caribbean. He noted that physical space to accommodate an increased number of students continues to be a fundamental hurdle, as the CLE attempts to cope with an ever-changing increasing number of potential entrants.

Review role of CLE
These new realities, coupled with a growing demand for legal education in the region, the Attorney General said, concatenate to make a compelling case for a review of the system which administers legal education, with a view to addressing the challenge of adequately providing legal education in the Caribbean. To make his point, Nandlall explained that this must necessarily entail a review of the role of the CLE itself as an administrator of law schools in the Region.

In so doing, he further explained that one is compelled to interrogate whether this model is still feasible or, should the CLE assume the role of a regulator/accreditor of autonomous law schools established by Governments or private capital or a combination of the two.
He said the United Kingdom (UK) has a similar model which the region can resort to for guidance and that same can be tailored to suit regional peculiarities.

Wholly inadequate
Moreover, Guyana has also been calling on the CLE to grant permission for it to establish its own law school by emphasising that the number of spaces offered to Guyanese at the Hugh Wooding Law School is inadequate. Each year, graduates of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programmes and the top 25 graduates from the University of Guyana (UG) Law Department gain automatic acceptance to the law schools to read for their LEC. Due to zoning, Guyanese students are accommodated at the law school in Trinidad and Tobago.
Those who are not on the list of top 25 graduates and those with non-UWI law degrees can be admitted to the law schools if they are successful in the CLE’s annual entrance examination.

“Speaking for Guyana, the 25 automatic seats at the Hugh Wooding Law School after 50 years, is woefully inadequate,” Nandlall said. As a result of this system, he said that on average 20 UG LLB graduands are unable to gain entry into that law school. To this end, he said that officials from UG, UWI, and CLE are in ongoing discussions in relation to an increase in this quota.
The Attorney General added, “I am unsure as to what extent would normalcy return after the COVID-19 pandemic but currently as I indicated above, classes are being done online by law schools in the Region. If this trend continues to post the pandemic, then physical space to accommodate students will not be the grave dilemma that has plagued the Council for decades.”

Offshore education
Offshore education is now a very profitable and sought-after economic venture in the Caribbean, and compounds the matter further for the CLE’s system to be reviewed, he said in making a case for Guyanese students to be given an alternative, a school right here.
For example, he said that the University of London (UoL) runs an external LLB programme that is available in almost every territory in the Caribbean. This programme, over the years, he said, has produced thousands of LLB graduates in Trinidad and Tobago, and other territories. In Guyana, the UoL’s external LLB programme is offered by Nations University.
The Attorney General, nevertheless, said he has no doubt that other territories within the region will continue to prosecute their case for the establishment of law schools in their geographic place of choice. On the premises, he said the quicker CLE undertakes this introspection and review, the better, adding that no one expects the CLE to remain stagnant for the next 50 years.

To no avail
For close to a decade, Guyana has been moving to establish its own law school – the Joseph Oscar Fitzclarence Haynes Law School – with UG agreeing to host it at its Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown campus. But it has been denied permission by the CLE which noted that it was agreed that the Council should defer establishing new law schools. This was in late 2017.
As it is, if Guyana goes ahead and establishes its own law school with permission from the CLE, certification from that school would not be recognised in the rest of the Region as it will violate the treaty governing legal education. Every year, Guyanese are faced with enormous financial burdens, including $6,616,548 in tuition/compulsory fees for the two-year programme offered at the law school.
This, coupled with the cost of living in Trinidad and Tobago has deterred many persons from pursuing a legal career. In response to this, the Government of Guyana now offers limited fully-funded scholarships to Hugh Wooding Law School (HWLS). These scholarships are open to new and continuing students. To be eligible, applicants must be the holder of a LLB with a minimum GPA of 3.3. The applicant must be under the age of 35 and must have obtained the degree within the last five years. The applicant must also have an acceptance letter from the law school. Present students at the HWLS who wish to apply for the scholarship must have passed year one studies with at least three courses passed with Grade A.

2018 survey report
A recent survey report on legal education in the Caribbean found that three more law schools, including one in Guyana, should be established with the CLE managing such institutions instead of regulating them. The report which was delivered in 2018 called for new law schools to be set up “as soon as possible” as part of the University of Technology in Jamaica, UG, and Antigua and Barbuda.
The Canada-funded survey was executed by UWI and the Improved Access to Justice in the Caribbean (IMPACT Justice). According to the report, the reason for recommending the establishment of new law schools is mainly for the non-UWI LLB graduates whose degrees are equivalent to the UWI law degree in the eyes of the CLE.