Top 25 Guyanese UG Law Students will be granted automatic entry into Hugh Wooding Law School  

Georgetown : Following Government’s intervention, the top 25 Guyanese Nationals, graduates of the University of Guyana (UG) Law Programme, 2013, will be given automatic entry into Hugh Wooding Law School, for the academic year September 2013-2014.
According to a statement from Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, an additional 10 students who are non-Guyanese Nationals, graduating out of the said programme will enjoy automatic entry to Norman Manley or Eugene Dupuch Law School depending on which zone their territory falls.
These decisions came following a meeting which was held by way of teleconference and was convened at the Caricom Secretariat, Turkeyen, on Monday.
That meeting addressed specifically, the issue of the impasse affecting UG’s Law Students, entry into Hugh Wooding Law School and, generally, the review of legal education in the West Indies.
The meeting was chaired by the Honourable Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and also in attendance were Ms. Jacqueline Samuel-Brown, QC, Chairman of the Council of Legal Education of the West Indies, Minister Nandlall, Sheldon Mc Donald, Head of the Department of Law, UG, the Principals of the Hugh Wooding Law School, Trinidad, Norman Manley Law School, Jamaica and the Eugene Dupuch Law School, Bahamas, Safia Ali, General Counsel, Caricom, and the Assistant Secretary General of Caricom.
It has also been decided, that there will be a comprehensive review of legal education in the West Indies, and financial implications of the same will be discussed at the next meeting of the Caricom Heads of Government.
Earlier this year Minister Nandlall, during a meeting with UG law students had promised to find a permanent solution to the problem facing them, as it relates to entry into the Hugh Wooding Law School.
The Attorney General had told them that the Government of Guyana was working with Caricom towards finding a permanent resolution to end the perennial problem of Guyanese law students being accommodated at the Hugh Wooding Law Faculty.
Starting in 1995, and later adopted in 1996 as part of an agreement between the Council for Legal Education and UG, every year, 25 automatic placements were offered for entry into Hugh Wooding.
This agreement, which expired in 2012 and was later extended to 2014, was objected to at the Council for Legal Education 2014 meetings.
The Council made the argument on the grounds that when Caricom made expansive, the provision of legal education in the region, it would have increased the influx of students to UWI, and the opening up of new law programme in several Caricom states including at Mona, Jamaica.
On the other hand, no decision was taken to expand the Hugh Wooding Law Faculty, which now has to deal with the influx.