Writer: Gawaya Tegulle. PHOTO/FILE
Last week, a young lawyer, fresh from Makerere University, called me – sobbing pitifully – to deliver some bad news. It was a difficult and painful phone call; I had to struggle to make out the words, let alone make sense of them. Five minutes later, I was able to gather that she had received a regrets email, telling her the Law Development Centre (LDC) was unable to admit her – and more than 1,000 others.
Try this email for size:
“Dear Bar Course Applicant, ...I am very sorry to inform you that your application for admission was not successful. We received applications from very many qualified students this year. Unfortunately, we are not able to admit all the students who applied due to limited facilities. While we are unable to provide you with admission, we appreciate the time and effort you put into your application. We encourage you to continue pursuing your educational goals and wish you success in your future endeavours. Best regards, LDC Admissions Office.”
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I choose to be careful in my choice of words at a time like this. Suffice it to say though, that from a public affairs communication perspective, LDC management got this, not just wrong, but very, very wrong! Does “strategic communication” ring a bell to LDC? Does LDC have a communication department – with a communication strategy? And does that communication strategy fit and feed into the broader corporate strategic plan?
Did the letter of regret come from a private institution that has the right and room to admit whomsoever they feel meets their criteria? Or are we talking about a public institution that has a statutory duty to perform a certain core function of strategic educational and national importance, and of which it maintains a statutory monopoly? And that is precisely why I asked whether LDC as a statutory entity has a communication department. If they (LDC) did, they’d maintain a deliberate, calculated, informed and altogether strategic approach to conduct public affairs, with a communication function properly mainstreamed therein.
If anyone ever asks you to define “dereliction of statutory duty”, please refer to this email.
LDC is a tough, but wonderful place to be at; the learning experience there is immensely enjoyable! Uganda has many law schools and each one will have its way of doing things. But it is at LDC that whatever you learn at university crystallises into knowledge and know-how. LDC gives you a million “aha!” moments in your journey of learning the law.
The unfortunate bit about LDC is that because of its tough training regimen, only the tenacious will make it. LDC, therefore, reminds you of Jesus’ hard-hitting pronouncement: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Sadder is the fact that many lawyers miss the bar ever so narrowly: small, fine margins.
Point is, every nation that hopes to register sustainable development must prioritise human resource development. And one of the core reasons LDC is a monopoly is that legal education is so important and so delicate that the final stop – the Bar Course – at which lawyers are turned into advocates and officers of court, thereby, must be centrally controlled. This ensures, inter alia, both uniformity of training and quality control. The unsuspecting public is thereby comforted by the fact that regardless of which university a lawyer attended, the fact that they passed through the tough sieve that LDC is, guarantees that he or she is properly trained. And that is why LDC must remain a monopoly.
And because it is a monopoly, the government has a legal duty to ensure that LDC is properly funded. As stipulated by the law, everyone who files a law degree from a university accredited to teach law must be admitted to LDC – whether it is a first-class degree or a pass degree is completely beside the point. An institution that trains advocates must be the first one to respect and implement the law as it is – not as they think it ought to be. Excuses of limited facilities and lack of resources show a lack of seriousness of both government and LDC management.
That “we...wish you success in your future endeavours...” is unfeeling and shows a lack of appreciation of LDC’s statutory obligations – I mean, where does LDC expect the students to go, when it holds a monopoly over Bar Course training?
Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda, [email protected]
