300 lawyers fail LDC exams

By Jeff Andrew Lule

The hopes of 300 lawyers to practise law have been dashed after they failed their final bar course examinations at the Law Development Centre (LDC).

According to the results released on Friday by LDC’s registrar Joyce Werikhe, out of 404 lawyers, who sat final examinations for the 2011/2012 academic year, only 104 passed the examinations and qualified for the award of a diploma in legal practice. Thirty-four lawyers passed marginally.

This means that 250 lawyers are to sit supplementary examinations in one to three subjects and will have a chance to graduate with those who passed outright.

A total of 46 lawyers totally failed the examinations in four or more subjects. Among those that failed are MPs.

LDC spokesperson Hamis Lukyamuzi said the 46 lawyers have to wait for another intake and re-do the pre-entry examinations with the new applicants and start their bar course afresh.

Law graduates are subject to pre-entry examinations before they can be enrolled for the bar course at the Law Development Centre.

The examinations were introduced by the Law Council in 2010 following the high failure rate at the Law Development Centre in the previous years.

The acting head of the bar course, Stephen Mubiru, attributed the failure to a number of reasons, including inadequate preparation by students regarding the topics from which the examination questions are drawn, especially in land transactions and the inability to apply the knowledge of principles of the law in providing solutions to practical legal problems.

Others are the inadequate use of primary sources of the law when answering some of the questions, poor time management and a tendency for some students to relax after passing the first and second term examinations.

The analysis of the results per subject shows that out of 395 students who sat for the compulsory subject, 374 passed and 21 failed.

The director of LDC, Frank Nigel Othembi, said the centre strives to ensure continuous improvement in the performance in the bar course in order to have quality lawyers.