Chief Justice urges lawyers to be ethical for credibility
The Chief Justice, Mrs Georgina T. Wood, has admonished lawyers to build their ethical edge and develop their moral fibre to ensure credibility in their profession.
“Make no mistake about this: You can neither thrive nor succeed without morality. Ethics is the instrument through which your knowledge can benefit society,” the Chief Justice said during the enrollment and call to the bar of 59 lawyers at the New Court Complex in Accra.
The ceremony, which was under the supervision of the General Legal Council and Ghana School of Law, saw 21 females and 38 males receiving their certificates. The new lawyers were taken through an Undertaking by the Chief Justice.
Mrs Wood charged the lawyers to use the knowledge acquired rightly, otherwise they were definitely going to add to the problems facing society.
She therefore challenged the new lawyers to develop personal leadership skills and build on integrity and resolve not to become mere additions to the legal profession.
“Resolve to be counted as positive contributors, shaping the frontiers of the law by making it relevant to our times,” she said.
She said it was important for the new lawyers to also understand the environment within which they operated so they could function successfully.
Mrs Wood said the country was emerging as a middle income economy with human resource needs for diverse services to keep up with the highly competitive globalised world.
Due to this, Mrs Wood said investors’ attraction to the country would depend on the integrity of the legal system and protection it offered to investments.
She therefore tasked the lawyers to understand the global dynamics of law in order to work out legal solutions in response to the emerging trends and complexities at the national and international levels.
The Chief Justice entreated them to study at all times to effectively deal with issues that would rise in their spheres of operations.
She said as new lawyers they were expected to become repository of the nation’s law and the conscience of the country, endowed with legal authority and power to deal with human issues, corporate matters, national and international concerns.
“What you put your knowledge to will be influenced by your sense of morality or personal ethics,” she told the lawyers.
Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and Mr Benson Nutsupui, the President of the Ghana Bar Association, presented certificates to the lawyers.
Source: GNA