The Law Association of Zambia- LAZ has attributed the low pass rate of University graduates to the fact that Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education – ZIALE trains students into practicing lawyers unlike universities and colleges that focus mainly on the academic part.
ZIALE is the sole institution responsible for training law students into practicing lawyers has continued to record a low pass rate at bar exams, which has caused concern on Zambias ability to provide adequate manpower for the smooth operation of the civil and criminal justice system across all the ten provinces of Zambia.
LAZ president Eddie Mwitwa in an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT stated that “the students themselves lack academic commitment because they have other works to do and most of them have only given school part-time, which is also contributing a to low pass rate”. He further commended women students saying that “women mostly take up the lead in scoring high marks due to their commitment”.
Meanwhile, Kabwe central lawmaker Tutwa Ngulube has since called on ZIALE and LAZ to call for a stakeholder’s meeting and discuss the dismal performance of students to find a lasting solution to the poor results. He added that the ZIALE should reduce on the number of students enrolled in order to have a good student to lecturer ratio and interaction.
Ngulube said that having too many students in one class may compromise service delivery. He was however quick to mention that most students coming out of Universities are allegedly half baked He further noted that some students who graduate from some of the Universities fail to draft even a simple legal letter, when they go on attachment at his law firm, a situation he described as disheartening.
This year ZIALE has recorded another low pass rate of only 5 students out of 355 students who sat the 2019 final exams. Only 5 made the grade to be admitted to the Bar, representing 1.4% pass rate. ZIALE has since been called upon to review its curriculum and improve on transparency. South Africa had similar problems in the past but after some reforms, the situation is now tenable and Zambia can take a lead from there.
However, ZIALE has defended themselves saying that there was nothing wrong with their bar examinations except that students needed to work hard to make the grade. They have stated that their training is for practice as opposed to the academic training.
Calls for reform to enable justice for both the elite and ordinary citizens have grown. The set up of local, magistrate and high courts across the country received a boost with construction and expansion of these facilities across all the ten provinces of Zambia. But access to lawyers and legal aid to enable a fair and equitable civil and criminal justice system remains largely for a few elites with the concentration of lawyers at 87% in Lusaka alone according to a research report by GRMI in 2019.
