A Licence Is Not a Membership Card

The annual ritual

Every year, towards the end of the legal year, Ghanaian lawyers begin the familiar exercise of renewing their solicitor's licence for the coming year. In principle it should be one of the simplest transactions in professional life: an enrolled lawyer pays a modest fee to the regulator (the General Legal Council) and receives a licence valid from 1 January to 31 December. For about a decade that fee has been GH¢250. The Law Platform¹ reported that the figure was fixed in 2014 and that the General Legal Council (GLC) discussed a substantial increase with Bar leadership in March 2024.

In practice, the process is neither simple nor cheap. Most lawyers renew through an online portal run by a professional association, and on that portal the licence is not the first thing you pay for. You must first clear your association's national dues and then your regional dues. Only after that does the option to pay for the licence become available. National dues rise with years of call, so the more senior the lawyer, the more they pay before they can buy a GH¢250 licence. This year, lawyers with more than 10 years at the Bar are paying GH¢1,600 in national Bar Association dues, plus regional dues that vary by region of practice.

A lawyer who does not want to go through an association, since no one is bound to be a member of an association, can, in theory, go directly to the GLC. That means a manual process: travelling to the Council's offices, paying in person and collecting a hard-copy licence. For a lawyer in Bolgatanga, Ho or Wa, or for anyone with a full diary, that is not a real alternative. So almost everyone uses the portal, and almost everyone pays the dues.

This article argues that this arrangement has no clear basis in law, distorts what "good standing" means, misleads the public and international counterparties, and protects associations from having to earn their members. We look at how the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and South Africa handle the same question, and we suggest how Ghana can separate the licence from the membership of associations without weakening either.

What the law actually requires

The starting point is section 8(1) of the Legal Profession Act, 1960 (Act 32)². It provides that a person, other than the Attorney-General or an officer of that department, shall not practise as a solicitor without "a valid annual licence issued by the General Legal Council to be known as 'a Solicitor's Licence'". Section 8(2) adds that no one may be issued a licence unless they have first been enrolled as a lawyer. The licence in the Second Schedule is granted for "the year ending on the 31st day of December".

The statute is clear about who issues the licence: the GLC. Nothing in Act 32 makes membership of any association, or payment of any association's dues, a condition for getting it. As one recent commentary in Citi Newsroom³ put it, the conditions for the licence are enrolment, pupillage for some applicants and evidence on professional conduct, and nothing in the Act makes Ghana Bar Association (GBA) membership or GBA dues a condition precedent or subsequent.

The Constitution points the same way. Article 21(1)(e) guarantees "freedom of association, which shall include freedom to form or join trade unions or other associations, national and international, for the protection of their interest".³ A freedom to join necessarily includes a freedom not to join, or to join a different body.

The GBA itself accepts that it is an association. The Constitution of the GBA provides in article 4 on membership that, “Every lawyer shall upon his enrolment in Ghana apply to be a member of the Association and shall upon becoming a member, pay to the Association such registration fee as may be determined by the General Council of the Bar”. Its website says that "by convention, all lawyers admitted to practice in Ghana become automatic members of the Association".⁴ Note the words: by convention, not by law. Graphic Online⁵ has likewise reported that "membership of the association is not compulsory". In construing Article 21 of the 1992 Constitution, the courts have held that membership of associations is not compulsory. In Mensima v Attorney-General [1996-97] SCGLR 676, the Supreme Court struck down a regulation that made membership of a distillers’ co-operative a condition for getting a distiller’s licence. Acquah JSC put it plainly: “the essence of freedom of association is the liberty or lack of compulsion on the individual to form or join an association”. A licence that could only be obtained by first joining an association is exactly the arrangement this article questions. See also New Patriotic Party v Attorney-General (the CIBA case) [1996-97] SCGLR 729, where the Court struck down a law compelling business associations to join the Council of Indigenous Business Associations. The GBA is named in the 1992 Constitution, and Act 32 gives it seats on the GLC, but being named in the Constitution does not turn a voluntary association into a licensing authority.

How practice drifted from the law

If the law is this clear, how did the association become the gateway to the licence?

Part of the answer is history and convenience. For years the GLC relied on the GBA to administer licensing. The GLC's own licensing page, as quoted by Citi Newsroom³, tells lawyers to "call at the offices of the Ghana Bar Association" to obtain or renew licences, while reserving to the Council the right to issue, suspend and cancel them. When the GBA moved renewals online, the improvement was real. The GBA has said that lawyers "can now renew their solicitor licenses within minutes, and from anywhere in the world, as compared with the previous manual renewal process that took months".⁶ We acknowledge that contribution and commend the GBA for that.

The difficulty is what was built into the portal. The GBA's own constitution explains why dues come first. Under Article 25(4), "… a member is of good standing if as a registered member he is not at the given time in default of payment of any subscription or levy payable and is not in breach of any decision of the Association".⁷ Article 35(2) allows regional and forum executive committees to impose levies on top of national subscriptions. These are sensible rules for an association managing its own members. They become a problem when the association's internal definition of good standing is used as the test for whether a lawyer may practise for a particular year after being called to the Bar and enrolled by the GLC.

That is exactly what has happened. The GLC's "Find a Lawyer" page describes its list of "Lawyers in Good Standing" as comprising "lawyers who are in Good Standing with the Ghana Bar Association and have paid all dues relating to the GBA", and adds that "only these lawyers may be given audience by a Judge in a court of Law".⁸ The GLC homepage tells the public that only lawyers licensed by the Council may practise and directs them, "for a list of Licensed Lawyers", to the Lawyers in Good Standing.⁹

The result is a quiet but important mix-up. A statutory status (licensed by the GLC) has been merged with a private status (up to date with association dues). A lawyer can hold a valid licence and still be absent from a list that the public, the courts and foreign businesses treat as the official register of who may practise.

Why this matters

It turns voluntary dues into a compulsory charge

When a GH¢250 licence can only be reached after paying association dues and levies that rise with seniority, then the real cost of renewing the license is set by the association, not the regulator. A tiered dues structure is not wrong in itself. The American Bar Association¹⁰, for example, charges dues by years since admission. The difference is that ABA membership is optional. Ghanaian lawyers who use the portal do not have a real choice.

Dr A. M. Mashood, who is admitted in both Ghana and New York, asks the key question: if a lawyer's ability to practise depends in practice on getting a licence through a system run by professional associations, "to what extent can membership of those associations still be described as a genuinely voluntary exercise of freedom of association?".¹¹

It is, in economic terms, a tie

Competition lawyers will recognise the structure. A product that customers must buy (the statutory licence) is made available only together with a second product they are free to refuse (association membership). When the seller of the second product controls the only practical channel to the first, buyers cannot shop around, and the seller faces little pressure on price or quality. The concern is not that associations charge for membership. It is that the licence has become the lever that makes membership effectively unavoidable.

It misleads the public and international counterparties

Banks, multinational companies, development finance institutions and foreign law firms routinely check that a Ghanaian lawyer is entitled to practise before they rely on that lawyer's opinion, sign documents prepared by them or instruct them. When the GLC's own website presents a list based on association dues as the list of licensed lawyers, these users are being told something that is not legally accurate. A lawyer in good standing with the GBA is a member who has paid GBA dues. A lawyer licensed by the GLC is someone the law allows to practise. Those two groups usually overlap, but they are not the same, and the gap will grow as more associations form.

It concentrates operational risk in a private system

When the licence runs through a private portal, a technical failure in that portal can stop lawyers from practising. Ghana has already seen this. In a 2024 ruling discussed by GSL Hub¹², counsel explained that he could not renew his 2024 licence in time because of a maintenance shutdown of the GBA portal "where the renewal takes place", and the court took judicial notice of those difficulties. This was in the case of The Republic v John Kingsley Arthur and Another, Nana Amakye II, Ex Parte Nana Kwamena Ekuntan II (Chief of Dwomo) Suit No. E9/13/2024 dated 29/04/2024. A public licence should not depend on the uptime of a private association's website.

It weakens the incentive for associations to earn their members

An association that knows its members must pass through its gate every year before they can be licensed to practise has little reason to compete on value. Welfare, mentorship, continuing legal education, advocacy for junior lawyers and transparent accounts become optional extras rather than reasons to join.

The arrival of a second association

Ghana now has a second association. The Law Society of Ghana was incorporated on 28 February 2022 as a company limited by guarantee.¹³ Now known as the Ghana Law Society (GLS), it was formally launched by the Speaker of Parliament on 30 September 2026 at its maiden Annual Bar Conference.¹⁴ In January 2026, the GLC reportedly accredited the GLS to facilitate the issuance of practising, chamber and pupillage licences, a role previously handled only through the GBA.¹⁵

The new body is the subject of litigation. A private legal practitioner, Yaw Aning Boadu, has sued the GLS, the Office of the Registrar of Companies and the GLC, challenging the Society's registration and accreditation.¹⁶ Separately, the GLS, its President Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor and lawyer Israel Tetteh have asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the constitutional references to the "Ghana Bar Association" mean one specific body or the Bar in general.¹⁷ There is also public debate about the political links of both bodies. We take no position on these matters, which are before the courts.

Our point is narrower and, we think, more important. Accrediting a second association to process licences opens the market up a little. It does not separate licensing from association. The GLS mobile app, for instance, lets lawyers pay "annual professional dues, pupillage fees, and regulatory charges" and then "generate and download your official practising license and chamber certificates upon successful payment and clearance".¹⁸ If the licence is still reached through an association, a lawyer now chooses which association's dues to pay, but must still pay some association's dues. That replaces a single gatekeeper with two. The Speaker of Parliament was right to say at the GLS launch that "the profession is greater than both the Ghana Bar Association and the Ghana Law Society".¹⁹ Some lawyers are even members of both associations since membership currently is not mutually exclusive at least under the GBA’s constitution. The licence, which belongs to the State and is administered by the GLC, should sit above both of them.

What happens elsewhere

United States: the regulator licenses, associations compete

The United States has two models. About 32 states and the District of Columbia have "mandatory" or "integrated" bars, where joining the state bar is a condition of practice.²⁰ The rest have voluntary bars, where lawyers usually pay a licensing fee to the state supreme court and may choose whether to join an association.²¹

New York is a clear example of the voluntary model. Under section 468-a of the Judiciary Law, every admitted attorney registers every two years with the court system's Office of Court Administration and pays a flat US$375, with set portions going to client-protection and legal-services funds.²² Registration is done online directly with the courts. The New York State Bar Association is a separate voluntary body, and membership has no effect on the right to practise.¹¹

Even in mandatory states, the US Supreme Court has limited what compulsory fees can pay for. In Keller v State Bar of California, 496 U.S. 1 (1990), the Court held that an integrated bar may not use mandatory dues for political or ideological activities that are not germane to regulating the profession or improving legal services.²³ California then went further. On 1 January 2018, its State Bar spun off its sections into an independent, voluntary California Lawyers Association, and the State Bar describes itself as a regulatory agency that "no longer has membership or associational aspects".²³ The ABA Journal reported that observers saw positive change after the split, with the regulator focusing more closely on admissions and discipline.²⁴ One detail stands out: the State Bar still collects voluntary association dues for lawyers who choose to join and passes them on, and the association pays back the administrative cost. Joining is an opt-in on a regulator's form, not a gate in front of the licence.

United Kingdom: separation written into statute

In England and Wales, the Legal Services Act 2007 requires bodies that combine representative and regulatory roles to keep them apart. Section 30 requires the Legal Services Board to make rules ensuring that regulatory functions are "not prejudiced by" representative functions and that regulatory decisions are taken, as far as reasonably practicable, independently.²⁵

For solicitors, the Law Society is the representative body and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is the independent regulator.²⁶ The practising certificate fee is set within a statutory framework, approved by the Legal Services Board, collected by the SRA, and is a flat amount for individuals.²⁷ For 2025/26 the individual fee is £326, and the joint application to the Legal Services Board confirms it "is not calculated based on an individual's means".²⁸ Solicitors on the roll automatically become members of the Law Society without a separate subscription, and its share of the fee is limited to purposes permitted by the Act.²⁹

The Bar shows the same principle even more clearly. The Bar Standards Board regulates. The Bar Council represents. Most of the compulsory practising certificate fee goes to regulation, and the Bar Council's wider representative work is funded largely by a separate, voluntary Bar Representation Fee, for which the suggested minimum is £175 a year.³⁰ The representative body has to persuade barristers to contribute. It cannot make that contribution a condition of the right to practise.

Nigeria: a single bar, and a profession pushing back

Nigeria is the closest comparison to Ghana and a cautionary one. Section 8 of the Legal Practitioners Act makes payment of an annual practising fee a condition of the right of audience. The fee is legally payable to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, who keeps one-tenth and remits nine-tenths to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).³¹ In practice, the NBA collects the Bar Practising Fee through its own portal,³² and the fee is tiered by years of call.³³ To get the NBA stamp and seal needed for legal documents, lawyers must also show proof of payment of branch dues.³⁴

That bundle has been challenged repeatedly. In 2022, a Federal High Court held that the duty to collect practising fees belonged to the Chief Registrar and restrained the NBA from collecting them directly.³⁵ On 8 May 2026, in Christabel Zoe Ayuk & 11 Ors v Incorporated Trustees of the NBA & 4 Ors (FHC/ABJ/CS/2241/2025), Justice Nyako held that "neither an association nor a regulatory body can introduce fresh substantive conditions inconsistent with the Act", and that an enrolled practitioner may not be denied the right to practise "solely because of failure to comply with administrative requirements not expressly imposed by the Legal Practitioners Act".³⁶ At the same time, a Legal Practitioners Bill before the National Assembly would formally give the NBA power to issue and renew practising licences.³⁷

Two lessons follow. First, when an association's administrative requirements are layered on a statutory licence, the result is years of litigation and uncertainty. Second, Nigeria is at least open about its choice: it has a single, compulsory Bar, and its debate is about whether to make that explicit in law. Ghana's position is less coherent. Our associations are legally voluntary but in practice seem to operate as compulsory gateways.

South Africa: one regulator, many associations

South Africa has made the cleanest break. The Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014 created a single South African Legal Practice Council to regulate all attorneys and advocates, including admission, enrolment and professional conduct.³⁸ When the Act came into force on 1 November 2018, the statutory provincial law societies were abolished and became regional offices of the Council.³⁹ The Department of Justice explained that bar associations "will no longer have the responsibility to regulate the profession" but "can however continue to exist as voluntary associations".⁴⁰

What followed is a plural, voluntary landscape. The Law Society of South Africa continues "as a voluntary, representative, professional interest body for attorneys", with the Black Lawyers Association and the National Association of Democratic Lawyers as constituent members alongside provincial attorneys' associations.⁴¹ Advocates have their own voluntary bars. South Africa has also dealt with the question Ghana's Supreme Court now faces, namely how the profession is represented on public bodies when there are several associations. In February 2026, the Legal Practice Council adopted Rule 16A, under which nominations for the profession's seats on the Judicial Service Commission may be made by any practising practitioner in good standing or by any qualifying bar association or law society.⁴² The regulator sets a neutral procedure, and associations compete within it.

Summary of the comparison

What reform should look like

None of this requires new institutions. It requires the GLC to fully exercise the powers it already has, and associations to compete for the loyalty they now get by default.

For the General Legal Council

1. Run its own online licensing portal. We advocate for the GLC to have its own online portal for renewal of practising licences. A lawyer should be able to log in, confirm their enrolment details, meet any lawful conditions, pay the prescribed fee directly to the GLC and download a licence immediately. Ghana already has the public digital payment systems to support this.

2. Issue a verifiable digital licence. Each licence should carry a unique number and a QR code that anyone, in Ghana or abroad, can check against the GLC's live database.

3. Publish a public register of licensed lawyers. The register should be clearly titled "Lawyers Licensed to Practise in Ghana", be searchable by name and enrolment number, be updated in real time, and be clearly separate from any association's list of members. The current "Lawyers in Good Standing" wording on the GLC website should be withdrawn or reworded so that it no longer equates association dues with the right to practise. A lawyer in good standing ought to be one who is licensed by the GLC to practise and not one who has paid his or her association dues.

4. Set out the licence conditions in published rules. If continuing legal education, tax clearance or anything else is to be a condition of renewal, it should be imposed by the GLC through a legal instrument, not by association policy or the order of steps on a portal.

5. Make any association role strictly optional and unbundled. If the GLC keeps accredited associations as convenient channels, the licence fee must always be payable on its own, and association dues must appear as an optional add-on that a lawyer can decline. California's model, in which the regulator collects voluntary association dues as a separate opt-in, shows how this can work.

6. Apply the same criteria to every association. Accreditation to handle licensing, if it continues at all, should rest on objective, published criteria open to any qualifying body. The broader constitutional question of which association sits on public bodies should be settled by neutral wording and a fair procedure. The Constitution Review Committee has reportedly recommended exactly this,³ along the lines of South Africa's Rule 16A.

For the associations

Decoupling is not an attack on associations. It is an invitation for them to show their value. The GBA has nearly 70 years of history, a national network and a good record of public interest work. The GLS has said its focus will be member welfare, including setting aside 20 per cent of members' dues for a life insurance policy.⁴³ That is the kind of competition we should encourage. Associations that want members should offer:

• welfare, insurance and benevolent support that members can see and use;

• high-quality, affordable continuing legal education;

• mentoring, minimum remuneration advocacy and practical support for junior lawyers;

• serious support for lawyers outside Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi;

• regular, published audited accounts and open, competitive elections;

• dues that reflect the services provided, with each component (national, regional, levies) explained.

An association that does these things will keep its members without needing control over the licence. An association that cannot do them should not be able to rely on the licence to make up the difference.

Answering the objections

"Associations need the revenue." They do, and they are entitled to raise it from members who choose to belong. The UK Bar Council funds much of its representative work through a voluntary contribution. Funding a private body through a public licence is not a sustainable model, and it is open to legal challenge, as Nigeria's courts have shown.

"Without the portal link, compliance with CLE and discipline will collapse." Compliance is the regulator's job. If CLE is to be a licensing condition, the GLC should impose it by rule and check it through its own system, accepting credits from any accredited provider, including any association.

"More associations will fragment the profession." South Africa has one regulator and several associations, and its profession remains unified where it counts: one roll, one code of conduct and one disciplinary system. Plurality of associations is not the same as plurality of regulation. The danger is not that there are two associations. The danger is that there are two gatekeepers.

"The GBA is in the Constitution." It is, and the Supreme Court will decide what those references mean. But no reading of those provisions makes the GBA the issuer of the solicitor's licence. Section 8 of Act 32 gives that role to the GLC alone.

Starting the conversation

A licence to practise law is a public instrument. It tells the courts, clients and the world that the State, through its regulator, recognises the holder as competent and fit to practise. Membership of an association is a private choice. It says that a lawyer has chosen to belong to a community of colleagues for mutual support and collective voice. Both matter, but they are different things and should not be sold as one.

Ghana does not need to reinvent its legal profession to fix this. It needs the GLC to offer a direct, digital, affordable route to the licence; a public register of licensed lawyers that the world can trust; and associations, old and new, that win members by the value they offer. We invite the General Legal Council, the Ghana Bar Association, the Ghana Law Society and every Ghanaian lawyer to take up this conversation, ideally before the next renewal season starts.

Esther Koomson Esq. and Frederick Gurah Sampson Esq. are legal practitioners in Ghana. The views expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Ghanaian Kiosk or Esson Consult.

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