Dr Dominic A. Ayine, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, has urged the Legal Aid Commission to expand its services to district-level communities and organise regular mobile legal clinics to improve access to justice.
“The Commission’s presence must be felt beyond regional capitals. I encourage expanded district offices and regular mobile legal clinics that sit in the markets, community centres and traditional council halls on fixed days, so that people will know where and when help will come,” he said.
Mr Ayine said this in a speech read on his behalf at the launch of the Commission’s 2026 Legal Aid Week at the auditorium of the Law Court Complex in Accra on Tuesday.
The week is on the theme: “Justice at Your Doorstep.”
Dr Ayine also called for the deployment of lawyers to police stations and courts, where people were particularly vulnerable to losing their liberties.
The most decisive moments in a criminal case often occurred at the police station, he said, adding that a duty-lawyer scheme for police stations and first court appearances would give practical effect to Article 14(2) of the Constitution.
Dr Ayine urged the Commission to conduct regular reviews of cases involving people in custody to ensure that no one remained detained for years without legal representation.
The Attorney General said he would engage the Ghana Bar Association to encourage its members to undertake more pro bono cases.
He also proposed that law faculties and the Ghana School of Law operate supervised legal clinics and train paralegals and community legal volunteers to provide basic legal advice in rural communities.
Dr Ayine said his experience in legal practice had taught him that poverty often silenced people, leaving the poor unheard despite the strength of their cases.
He said proper legal representation could change the outcome of cases and help indigent people benefit from the protection of the law.
He described legal aid as an integral part of his professional practice and said he was determined to use his office to strengthen legal aid programmes.
“A right that cannot be reached is a right denied,” he said, stressing the need to transform legal aid from a promise into a functional system.
Dr Ayine urged the Commission to strengthen its alternative dispute resolution services to settle disputes closer to the people, noting that many family, land, tenancy and debt disputes did not require full trials.
He said collaboration with traditional authorities and community mediators could help resolve such disputes more quickly, affordably and amicably.
He also encouraged the Commission to use technology to improve access to its services, proposing a toll-free legal aid line, simple SMS and WhatsApp intake systems, and legal information in local languages to enable people to obtain initial advice promptly.
A shared case-management system linking the Commission, the courts and the Office of the Attorney General, he said, would help prevent legally aided clients from being lost between institutions.
Dr Ayine said legal aid could not depend solely on goodwill but required predictable and adequate funding in the national budget, supplemented where possible by development partners.
He urged the Commission to publish annual performance reports detailing the number of people served in the districts and the timeliness of outcomes.
He assured the Commission that the Office of the Attorney General would work closely with it on legal and policy reforms and ensure that prosecutors respected and supported the right of every accused person to legal representation.
“The measure of a justice system is not how it treats powerful people who can hire the best lawyers; it is how it treats the poor, the unlettered and the forgotten,” he said.
Dr Ayine urged the Commission to translate the theme of the Legal Aid Week into practical action and make it a promise it could fulfil.