Inside plan to 'kill' Law Development Centre monopoly

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In a brave move to centralise postgraduate legal training that has been a monopoly of the Law Development Centre (LDC) since 1970, the Government has drafted the National Legal Examination Bill, 2025, to repeal the Law Development Centre Act.

The object of the Bill is to establish the National Legal Examinations Centre (NLEC) as an independent body responsible for assessing legal competence and standardising legal education in the country.

If enacted, the Bill will see accredited universities and institutions offering the postgraduate diploma in legal practice, a course which has been offered by LDC as a sole institution that has been mandated to conduct post graduate legal training for purposes of enrolment as an advocate for the courts of judicature in the country.

Before a lawyer can practice law, they must first be enrolled as an advocate and obtain an annual practicing certificate.

This involves several steps, including completing a postgraduate diploma in legal practice and being admitted to the roll of advocates.

Under the arrangement, the law graduates will, instead of applying to LDC, study for an extra-year at their respective universities before sitting for the national legal examination administered by the National Legal Examinations Centre.

This has been sought as a remedy to the growing number of applicants without compromising the standards, according to the Attorney General, Kiryowa Kiwanuka.

In the recent past, LDC has been overwhelmed by the number of applicants. In the ongoing academic year, it was compelled to come up with two intakes to accommodate the applicants. 

A body corporate

A copy of the Bill seen by New Vision Online indicates that NLEC shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession, an official seal and may in the discharge of its functions sue and be sued in its corporate name.

Some of the functions of the national legal examinations centre will include registration of candidates for pre-entry examinations for admission into the bachelors of laws degree (LLB) programme conducted by the accredited law school.

This means that admission of students by the accredited law schools will be managed by NLEC as it has to issue certificates to the successful candidates.

NLEC will also register candidates for pre-entry examinations for admission into the postgraduate diploma in legal practice, which means that while the postgraduate legal training has been liberalised, NLEC will, through the pre-entry examinations, determine law graduates who qualify for admission.

NLEC will also be responsible for setting and marking the exams and releasing the results of examinations for the post graduate diploma in legal practice programme.

NLEC will be headed by the director who shall also be the secretary to the National Legal Examinations Council, the governing body of the centre.

Other members of the council will include the solicitor general, a representative from public universities, private universities, tertiary institutions, Uganda Law Society, the Judiciary, the education ministry, the National Council for Higher Education, education ministry permanent secretary, law council and two persons appointed by the Attorney General.

Powers of the body

Under the Bill, the national legal examination council will also have powers to, among others, charge examination registration fees.

The council will also have power to cancel the results of any candidate that would be adjudged to have engaged in any form of examination malpractice. A candidate found guilty of examination malpractice is liable to imprisonment for five years.

The Bill dictates that any student who, immediately before the commencement of the law, was registered as a student of LDC and has failed three or more examinations shall enrol to study the postgraduate diploma in legal practice programme at an accredited institution.

Also, students who will fail supplementary examinations shall apply to study the postgraduate diploma in legal practice at an accredited institution. 

In regard to employees of LDC, the Bill indicates that those whose contracts had not yet expired and have been allowed to serve by the centre will continue to serve until their contracts expire.

Move welcomed

Several legal brains have welcomed the move, saying it was overdue. However, Prof. Isaac Christopher Lubogo, a seasoned law don, argues that while the move may seem on the surface to decentralise the bar course and democratise access to professional legal training, it subtly replaces one monopoly with another.

“What we now face is the imposition of a compulsory legal practice track for all law graduates regardless of their intended career paths. This emerging phenomenon risks erasing the diversity of legal education purposes and distorts the constitutional, academic and professional freedoms enshrined in the country’s legal framework,” Lubogo argued.

Lubogo said the moment legal education is wholly structured around the bar course, it ceases to be an intellectual discipline and instead becomes a vocational indoctrination.

“The rich tapestry of legal education in the country has always rested on its interdisciplinarity, from philosophy and economics to sociology and governance. This emergent bar-centred curriculum silences these voices and thus a constitutional suspect,” Lubogo argued.

With multiple universities potentially accredited to run the bar course, Lubogo argues that the danger of academic cartels looms because elite universities may dominate access, inflate fees and exclude rural or underprivileged students, an accusation that has been placed on LDC. 

Lubogo argues that there is a need to implement a national legal education framework policy with inclusive principles of freedom, non-discrimination and professional flexibility.

“Repealing the LDC Act without a paradigm shift in legal education philosophy is merely a cosmetic reform. We risk replacing one iron gate with another, but this time, one guided with academic legitimacy but just as exclusionary,” Lubogo said.

Lubogo warns that curriculum overlap and dilution may arise as some universities may start embedding bar course content into undergraduate curricula to appeal to the students.