Shareholder agreement being finalised for local Law School

The Government is moving to finalise the shareholders’ agreement for the establishment of a law school in Guyana after which the Council for Legal Education (CLE) will have to examine it, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams said today.

“We’re working on the shareholders’ agreement – the definitive agreement and the business plan which would include the feasibility study and we hope to have that before the end of this month,” Williams told reporters when prompted at the sidelines of an event held at the Police Training Center this morning.

He said this agreement is being done against the backdrop of a Canadian funded study into legal education in the region, which recommended that law schools be established in Antigua, Guyana and Jamaica.

“We really need a law school in Guyana…Tuition fees this year has been increased at Hugh Wooding and is now TT$97,000…well over $3M Guyanese dollars…. that’s only for tuition; they still have to live and exist in Trinidad,” the Attorney General said.

He made a case for Guyana to produce more lawyers given the fact that the country is on the cusp of a transformation in the oil and gas sector.

“So we’re working on it…especially at this time with how Guyana is poised…we would need lawyers to deal with oil and gas, we would need lawyers to deal with the green state and economy. So we have a lot of capacity to build.”

Williams is not happy with the fact that Guyana is only allowed 25 students to enter the law programme in Trinidad as opposed to the twin-island republic and Jamaica churning out approximately 200 students yearly.

“We are limited to 25 and under and then the cost they impose on the 25 to actually go through the process is so prohibitive. So we need to ease this hardship on our students…a country cannot go wrong having people who have been exposed to law. We hope that it can lead to a more orderly and law-abiding society,” the Attorney General explained.

After several months of back and forth between the University of Guyana and the Attorney General Chambers, the university recently identified 10 acres of land at its Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown campus, for the construction of a building to house the J.O.F. Haynes Law School.

There has been controversy surrounding whether Guyana was granted permission from the CLE to establish the law school since there are no documents to show same but the AG dismissed those claims on the grounds that permission was granted before he assumed office.