LDC to reinstate pre-entry exams for 2026 intake

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The Law Development Centre (LDC) has announced that law graduates intending to enrol for the Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice in the next academic year will sit pre-entry exams.

This is contained in a press release issued on Monday, August 4, 2025.

“A pre-entry examination will be conducted for the academic year 2026 intake, primarily to manage the numbers without sacrificing quality,” the press release reads in part.

LDC indicated that the details for conducting the pre-entry exams will be published by September 1 this year, assuring anxious law graduates about their future.

The press release also states that the Cabinet has approved and commenced the process of repealing the LDC Act in order to propose a Bill establishing the National Legal Examinations Centre. This will enable the decentralisation of the Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice programme by accredited institutions and law schools.

The National Legal Examinations Centre will prepare a unified examination for the award of the Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice. This will enable law graduates to be admitted to the roll of advocates and represent litigants in courts of law.

Regarding the delayed admission, LDC explained that it had already admitted two intakes in the ongoing academic year, and thus cannot accommodate another intake before the current academic year concludes, due to human resource and infrastructural constraints.

After graduating with a law degree, graduates are required to pursue a Diploma in Legal Practice (bar course) at LDC in order to be enrolled as advocates of the courts of judicature in the country.

The pre-entry exams had been suspended in 2019 for a period of two years pending the conclusion of final legal procedures, opening a floodgate for law graduates across the country to join the bar course without being subjected to the exams.

Before the pre-entry exams at LDC were suspended, West Budama MP Jacob Oboth-Oboth, now the security minister, had planned to table a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament seeking to amend Section 6 of the Advocates Act to, among other things, scrap the pre-entry exams for the bar course at LDC.

Section 6 of the Advocates Act gives the Law Council powers to regulate legal training and determine qualifications for the bar course.

Oboth argued that the idea of pre-entry exams had outlived its usefulness and had become more commercial than academic in screening and selecting candidates for legal training.

He pointed to countries such as Ghana and Kenya, which, he said, have already abolished bar course pre-entry exams.

However, appearing before the Parliament’s Legal Committee in April 2019, retired justice Remmy Kasule, also the ex-Law Council Chairperson, described the scrapping of pre-entry exams as a regrettable move, noting that it would grossly compromise the quality of advocates in the long run.