Bill underway to stop LDC pre-entry exams

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  Law students may no longer have to go through the torment of sitting for exams before they can enroll for their bar course at the Law Development entre (LDC).

A private member’s Bill, the piece of legislation that is seeking to amend the Advocates’ Act to explicitly stop the Law Council from conducting pre-entry exams, is being pushed by the legal and parliamentary affairs committee.

Parliamentary legal committee chairperson, Jacob Oboth-Oboth, says the draft Bill is ready and   LDC staff could appear before Oboth’s committee in a few weeks.

“The amendment is not seeking to strip Law Council of powers to regulate training of advocates, but rather to stop it from requiring qualified lawyers to sit a special exam as a prerequisite to pursuing the Bar Course,” Oboth-Oboth told journalists. The decision on whether to sit the exams has become a heated debate among lawyers. Justice and Constitutional Affairs ministers leads the pack of those arguing the exams should be scrapped while the Law Council is bent on the exams staying to tame failure rates at LDC.