Acting Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie has asked newly enrolled lawyers to resist the temptation of cutting corners and stand upright to restore hope.
“I urge you all to resist the temptation to, as we say, cut corners,” he said at the 62nd call to the bar ceremony for 824 lawyers at the Accra International Conference Centre.
These include four visually impaired and physically challenged persons.
Justice Baffoe-Bonnie said the hunger to get rich quick may come but they should remember that “whenever other actors fail the nation; the lawyer must be the one who stands upright to restore the hope.”
He urged the lawyers to be guided by the call to service with integrity and sacrifice, adding: “For the robe you wear today and hereafter is not a symbol of privilege but a garment of duty.”
“As lawyers you now carry the hopes of people who look to the law as their last refuge when all else fail them.”
Justice Baffoe-Bonnie, also the Acting Chairperson of the General Legal Council, said each of the lawyers carried within them dreams of their families, hopes of their communities and the faith of a nation that still believed in justice.
“More importantly, do not seek to become lawyers who only know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Instead, be lawyers who stand for the voiceless- the Makola market woman, the rice farmer at Afife, and the poor child from Akuapem mountains who is denied opportunity.”
The law, he noted, lived not in books, statutes or precedents but in the heart of those who believed in its power to make life better.
“Go and make your words heal rather than injure, and your deeds uplift rather than lower. But above all let your integrity shine.”
Touching on legal education, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie noted the real and pressing challenges confronting Ghana.
“From backlog of aspiring students waiting with bated breaths to secure entry into the Ghana School of Law, to the nagging questions about quality, infrastructure, and the need to modernise in an area of rapid technological advancement, its traces are visible all over.”
He, however, said the challenges should not be seen as “signs of decay but birth pangs of renewal. The challenges we face today are the very light that must illuminate our path forward.”
Justice Boaffoe-Bonnie said the airwaves were already thick with debates on the need for reforms, as hope and frustrations for the aspiring lawyer intermingled in equal measures.
He said the Ghana School of Law, under the guidance of the General Legal Council and in partnership with all stakeholders, must therefore, stand ready to rise to this new dawn.
“We must, however, ensure that the reforms we seek do not merely expand the numbers but truly refine every purpose of legal education and the legal profession in Ghana in the 21st century.”
