On Wednesday, Attorney General Dorcas Oduor held a consultative meeting with key stakeholders in the legal education sector to help resolve protracted issues that have had a negative effect on law students. The meeting discussed priority issues concerning admission criteria for the Advocates Training Programme, the transparency of the examination process set by the Council of Legal Education, and the fees for the programme.
Third-year law students in Kenya, accused the CLE of deliberately failing them and delaying their admission by marking their exams down, citing an alarm over the highly expensive fees charged for ATP besides a lack of budgetary support for financially needy students who may wish to enroll at KSL.
The meeting brought together leaders from the Law Society of Kenya, chairpersons of KSL and CLE, representatives from the Kenya Law Reform Commission, among other key players in legal education. At the end of this meeting, a statement released to the media announced the composition of a working committee headed by the chairperson of the KLRC to address concerns raised by the students.
The Committee is mandated to consolidate the issues raised by students, harmonize them in consideration of various court rulings on legal education. The Committee will be mandated to come up with a report within two months that guides the implementation of reforms necessary within the sector, including recommendations from the Taskforce Report on Legal Education Sector Reforms.
The committee will also elicit views and suggestions from the general public, in particular from the concerned students, in a manner that ensures full representation of the issues at hand.
Attorney General Oduor said the government was committed to ensuring the best standards existed within the legal education system, and that raised issues were handled and taken care of with involvement from all stakeholders, especially students.