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170 lawyers to miss LDC graduation
Law Development Centre (LDC) students celebrate during their graduation ceremony at their campus in Makerere recently. Atleast 170 students are to miss graduation because of failing their retakes. PHOTO BY JOSEPH KIGGUNDU
What you need to know:
The continued failure by law students to graduate in time has raised doubts about the future of the profession.
Failure to pass final and now supplementary examinations of the Law Development Centre has dented hopes of 174 lawyers to graduate this year.
According to the results released by the LDC examinations board on Friday, out of the 464 lawyers who re-sat the exams, 290 passed and qualify for the award of a Diploma in legal practice. LDC’s 39th graduation is slated for July 27 and 450 students are expected to graduate including who were pursuing a diploma in law.
The lawyers re-sat papers commonly known as supplementary/special examinations between April and May in subjects they had earlier failed in 2010/2011 and 2009/2010 academic years.
Re-sitting the papers
This means these lawyers will have to re-sit papers they failed with students of the coming academic year (2012/13), according to LDC publicist Hamis Lukyamuzi.
Majority of the lawyers admitted at the Centre fail to complete the course in the record 11 months after failing exams which they re-sit, with some graduating after four years.
Analysis of the results per academic year shows that students of 2010/11 academic year performed better than those of 2009/10, something attributed to the introduction of pre-entry exams three years ago.
A total of 238 students who sat the exams in the academic year,2010/2011, 197 passed and 41 failed compared to 226 students of 2009/10 academic year who sat exams and 133 failed
Big number of failures
Out of 75 students who sat Land Transactions,71 passed and four failed. 49 students sat Domestic Relations of whom 45 passed and four failed . 50 students sat Civil Proceedings ,35 passed and 15 failed .
Another 66 students sat Criminal Proceedings, 46 passed and 20 failed and 224 students sat Commercial Transactions ,93 passed and 131 failed .
Although failure rates on the bar course have gone down markedly from 93 percent in academic year 2009/2010 to 74 percent in academic year 2010/2011, according to LDC records, the failures are still synonymous with the Centre .
LDC is the only institution in the country which admits law graduates to obtain diplomas in legal practice. A lawyer cannot practice as an advocate of the High Court in Uganda without the diploma.
