How tough is it to become a lawyer in East Africa?
What you need to know:
- An analysis of examination results from law schools in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda shows that qualifying to practise law in the three countries is far from being a walk in the park.
Dar es Salaam. It is not a tea party to be an advocate in the East African bloc, examination results for law school students can attest to this.
In recent years, three East African countries, namely, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda have reported massive failures in exams that would enable students to become advocates.
In the just released bar examination results for the 2021 academic year in Tanzania, only 4.1 percent passed the exam, and now are waiting for swearing in before the Chief Justice. The percentage represents 26 out of 633 students who sat for the exam.
Uganda for its part, reports show that only 9.8 percent of students seeking to become advocates passed exams for the 2019/2020 academic year, prompting calls to scrap the bar course.
The percentage suggests that only 145 out of 1,474 students who wrote the exam, were given a green light to continue practicing law as advocates.
Going by the reports from Kenya, only 18.4 percent of students who sat for the bar exam in 2018 sailed through.
This tells that only 290 out of 1,572 students who sat for the exam, made it, a fact that raised concerns in the national assembly and among legal practice stakeholders and necessitated a need for urgent restructuring measures.
While stakeholders put the blame on universities for producing poor quality students, others have pointed an accusing finger at incompetency of the Law School of Tanzania (LST) lecturers and short duration of the course.
In East Africa, before a graduate of law starts practicing the same as an advocate, he might attend the Law School before being okayed to practice the law.
“In a nutshell, universities bring us half-baked students, and thus making them (students) fail to cope with what it takes for them to sail through,” said LST deputy principal Zakayo Lukumay.
He said some students that they received were incompetent in the English language.
“In LST exams in some cases, a single question can cover the entire page. So, failure to understand the question due to language barrier can culminate in failure to answer the question properly,” elaborated Prof Lukumay.
Speaking during a twitter space dialogue organised by Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL), Fulgence Massawe, an advocate, said difficulties in passing the bar exam was due to the high status that the career commands.
“Given the respect that the career has earned, those who are currently practising it feel like only a few deserve to practise the law,” argued Mr Massawe. This mentality, he said, was instilling fear in students to pursue law as they feared that they would not make it.
This in turn, he went on saying, was adversely affecting the legal profession.
However, Mr Massawe said, considering the fact that advocates were dealing with the lives of people, they might have a smart brain.
“That is why the bar is not an easy exam that you can just sit for and pass. You have to actually read it and understand it,” he explained.
Advocate Jebra Kambole said the root cause for the massive failure, Tanzania in particular, is a short period for undertaking the course.
It takes one year to complete the course; six months for attending the class and the other six for field work.
“There is a need to make some changes and extend time for studies,” recommended Mr Kambole.
The Vice-Chancellor of Saint Augustine University of Tanzania (Saut), Prof Costa Mahalu, put the blame on lecturers for law school failures.
He asked the LST lecturers to reflect on whether they were fulfilling their duties to perfection.
“If you have 633 students, then only 26, equivalent to 4.1 percent, are successful, it is a shame to teachers because one of the main qualities of a teacher is to make his students succeed with skills and knowledge in their fields,” he noted.
In 2019 a study revealed that almost 80 percent of students who sat for their bar exams each year in Kenya did not pass, raising concerns among stakeholders and necessitating a need for urgent restructuring measures.
Like Tanzania and Uganda, in Kenya, law school university graduates must go to School of Law to complete their advocates training programme to be able to sit for their bar exams.
Those who pass the exams are later sworn in as advocates in the high court of Kenya.
