The sod-turning ceremony for the establishment in Guyana of a fourth law school under the Council of Legal Education (CLE) – aimed at addressing growing demand for legal education across the Caribbean – was held yesterday at UG’s Turkeyen Campus.
The project had received formal approval from the CLE in September 2025 following a feasibility process, with the Government providing the infrastructure while the regional CLE will manage the law school.
The school is intended to serve students from Guyana and other Caribbean countries, expanding capacity in a region where existing CLE institutions have struggled to accommodate an increasing demand for legal training. In fact, Guyana has historically had limited access to regional law-school places, including an allocation of 25 places annually at Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago.
While the sod-turning ceremony marked the formal start of the project’s construction phase, key details about the execution of the project, including when the facility is expected to be completed and when the first cohort of students could begin classes, remain unclear. The anticipated cost of the facility, the number or identity of contractors involved, the bids received or evaluated, or the timeline for construction and eventual commencement of classes, were other details left undisclosed.
Speaking with Kiskadee Watch after the ceremony, CLE Chairman Liesel Weekes said that the Council will retain control over the new law school, including the appointment of its principal and lecturers and the selection of students for admission through its Selection Committee. While the institution will be located at UG, it will operate as a CLE law school.
The new institution is projected to admit 120 students in its first year, although it remains unclear how many of those places will ultimately be taken up by Guyanese students.
Weekes indicated that the CLE is moving towards eliminating distinctions based on nationality when determining admission to its law schools. “It is unlikely that there is going to be a quota of any nationality of students,” she said, noting that the Council is currently reviewing its treaty to address issues surrounding admissions.
The proposed approach could mean that Guyanese students will compete for admission alongside applicants from other Caribbean jurisdictions rather than benefit from a fixed nationality-based allocation of spaces.
Weekes said the question of how much students will pay in tuition has not yet been settled, explaining that fees would take into account the economic circumstances in Guyana, the cost of operating the institution and the Government’s financial contribution. “The tuition would be set based on the economic realities in Guyana,” Weekes said.
She added that the CLE would be guided by the principal appointed to run the institution in assessing the economic conditions on the ground before determining the level of tuition.
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Weekes also left open the possibility that students could pay little or nothing initially if the Government decides to subsidise the programme. “The government may very well say the first class will be free,” she said. However, it is not yet clear whether the establishment of the new school will result in a significant reduction in the cost of legal education for Guyanese students.
Weekes said the final decision on the Government’s contribution and the resulting tuition structure will have to be worked out before the fees are determined. She also indicated that UG is expected to have an important relationship with the new institution, despite the CLE retaining control. UG is a signatory to the treaty establishing the CLE, and Weekes said she expects communication between the two institutions to increase as the project progresses.
She said UG could potentially serve as a feeder school for the new law school, similar to the relationship between the University of the West Indies campuses and the existing CLE law schools. She said, however, that this would not mean that UG and the CLE law school would have equal status. She noted that the CLE would be prepared to engage with UG when the university is ready to do so, pointing out that the two institutions have previously engaged over the number of UG students being admitted to law school.
Meanwhile, Weekes said the timeline for completion of the new law school remains a matter for Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall.
In his remarks, Nandlall said the project represents the culmination of decades of efforts to establish a CLE institution in Guyana, recalling that it dates back to 1996, when the then Attorney General Bernard De Santos, acting on the instructions of then President Dr Cheddi Jagan, raised the proposal at a meeting of the CLE.
According to Nandlall, the push for a Guyanese law school emerged from difficulties experienced by University of Guyana law graduates in gaining admission to Hugh Wooding Law School. He recalled that the first cohort of graduates from UG’s LLB programme in 1995 encountered difficulties securing places, while a second batch in 1996 faced similar problems, with some students reportedly remaining out of the classroom for almost an entire semester.
The issue eventually reached the level of CARICOM heads of government and became the subject of discussions within the CLE, Nandlall said, noting that a subsequent agreement between UG, the University of the West Indies and the CLE provided for the automatic admission of 25 UG graduates to Hugh Wooding Law School, temporarily easing the problem. However, he said the arrangement could not permanently resolve the wider shortage of spaces at the region’s law schools.
“The demands for legal education have skyrocketed over the last five decades,” he said, arguing that the CLE must adapt its infrastructure, administration and methods of delivering legal education to meet the needs of the next 50 years.
Nandlall shared that Guyana’s bid for the institution was not automatically accepted and that the country had to satisfy strict criteria established by the CLE. A feasibility study was required to demonstrate that the proposed institution would be financially and economically viable over the long term, rather than merely during its first few years of operation.
Nandlall pointed out that the institution should not be viewed as exclusively Guyanese. “It’s not a Guyanese institution. While it will be located in Guyana, it is a regional institution to serve the people of the region and to be administered by the regional council administering legal education,” he said.
He credited successive Attorneys General, members of the judiciary, representatives of the legal profession, CLE members and University of Guyana lecturers with advancing the initiative over the years, singling out President Irfaan Ali and recalling that in 2021, before travelling to a CLE meeting in Barbados, the President told him: “AG, go and bring home this law school.”
He described the development as “a piece of history” and said it would address the aspirations of generations of Guyanese students who have faced difficulties accessing professional legal education. “History will record us here today because this law school, this law school will be here for a very, very long time.”
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