At stake are 21 graduates of the Leeds Beckett University Bachelor of Laws programme delivered through Gaborone Universal College of Law and Professional Studies (GUC), who were refused registration for the June 2026 Bar Examinations. The application challenging the LSB’s refusal was dismissed by Justice Godfrey Nthomiwa on Tuesday. The LSB says its powers to scrutinise a law qualification before allowing its holder through the gates of the profession come directly from the Legal Practitioners Act and the Regulations made under it. However, the graduates argued that the Society went beyond what Parliament authorised, effectively creating an additional hurdle that does not appear in the Act. They further said LSB’s response was unreasonable, irrational and unjustified and therefore had to be reviewed and set aside. That clash has now placed the legislation under the judicial microscope because the applicants’ case is built around section 4(1)(b)(ii) of the Legal Practitioners Act, read together with regulation 2(a) of the Legal Practitioners (Examinations and Qualifications for Admission) Regulations. The provision requires an applicant to have obtained, by examination conducted by the issuing university, a law degree from a university prescribed under the law.
The LSB relied on precisely that provision when it rejected the graduates’ applications. “Upon consideration of the documentation submitted, including your degree certificate and academic transcript, it has not been demonstrated to our satisfaction that you obtained, by examination conducted by the issuing university, a degree in law from a university listed in the Second Schedule to the Legal Practitioners Act (‘the Act’) or in the Schedule to the Legal Practitioners (Examinations and Qualifications for Admission) Regulations (‘the Regulations’), as required in terms of Section 4 (1) (b) (ii) of the Act, read together with regulation 2 (a) of the Regulations,” the Society told the applicants in its May 29, 2026 decision. That decision effectively stopped the graduates before they could even get into the examination room. The LSB’s defence is that its responsibilities under the Act go considerably further than checking certificates and registering candidates. The Society argued that it is the statutory regulator of Botswana’s legal profession and has a responsibility to ensure that people entering the profession satisfy the requirements established by law. Its position was that accepting the graduates’ interpretation of its mandate would reduce the Society to “a registry office devoid of any evaluative function.” The Society relied on its statutory responsibility to maintain standards in the profession. The judgment records that section 59 of the Act gives the Society functions that include: “promoting legal education for the legal profession and upholding standards of professional conduct.” The LSB therefore presented its decision as an exercise of its regulatory responsibility rather than an attempt to arbitrarily keep graduates out of the profession.
