Welcome to the Faculty of Law of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana’s University of Choice. The young Faculty, established in 2011, has fast positioned itself as one of Ghana's topmost Law Faculties where excellent legal instruction, research and community service are undertaken. Presently offering only the three year Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programme, preparations are underway to mount some postgraduate courses.
Also, the mission of the Faculty is to produce law graduates with the knowledge, competence and skills to provide legal solutions to the problems confronting Ghana, Africa and globally; to undertake cutting edge research to confront these problems; and, through collaborations with and education of the public, contribute, through law, to making the community, the country and the continent especially a better place.
The Faculty's vision is to become and remain one of Africa's best Law Faculties, providing rich, experiential, critical legal education.
The Faculty believes in a sound student-to-teacher ratio in order to facilitate a highly interactive learning environment, with the focus being on the student. The lecture room, law library, moot courtroom, conference hall, and the community are necessary theatres of student learning. Indeed, UCC Law's unique student learning experiences include:
1. Thirty (30) hours of Orientation Classes, prior to the commencement of formal lectures, devoted to Introduction to Law, and Legal Methods.
2. Ninety (90) credit hours of coursework, comprising core and elective subjects, from which the student's Cumulative Grade Point Average is computed.
3. Six (6) credit hours of Professional Development, where the student is introduced, by way of continuous training, to disciplines directly related to and beneficial to legal studies such as Ethics and Reasoning, Criminal Justice and Criminology, Psychology and Emotional Intelligence.
4. Two semesters during which students undertake supervised attachment with the Judicial Service, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Police Service, Regional House of Chiefs for hands on experience.
5. Advocacy training is built into the coursework. Besides that, participation in various Faculty-organised, national and international moot court competitions is encouraged and supported by the Faculty.
6. Mandatory attendance at the Jurists' Confab, an annual conference of judges, lawyers, law lecturers, and to which UCC law students are invited to participate. Law students learn from the papers presented, they interact with mentors and they build their confidence levels.
The UCC Law Student is given a custom-made blazer; a set of Ghanaian legislation, case law and legal literature in electronic format; coursebooks and textbooks; and tutors to support them along the way.
The law student's Matriculation is complemented by the Roll Call Ceremony; they have several guest lecturers; the Jurists' Confab has been mentioned; and the graduand is seen off in a solemn Valedictory Dinner, during which senior academics, Jurists and graduands mingle and dine and at which farewell speeches and words of admonition, given.
There is no doubt that the Law programme at UCC is unique. Its graduates will make the country proud. And the Faculty will continue to find ways of improving on the delivery of its triple mandates in legal scholarship, namely law teaching, legal research and community engagement - each of which has a Department devoted to it. Welcome to UCC Law.
Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson
Professor and Founding Dean
