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Justice Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu
Justice Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu

Prof. Mensa-Bonsu charges lawyers to be diligent, meticulous

A justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, has charged lawyers to be meticulous and diligent in their work to provide quality services to the public.

She asked them to particularly pay attention to the rules of procedure and how they craft their pleadings to ensure that they do not fail their clients.

According to her, it was common for a promising or good case to fail not because it had no foundation in substantive law, but rather due to a poorly crafted pleading by a lawyer or the lawyer’s non adherence to the rules of procedures.

“Some cases have good prospects but die due to bad lawyering. The ideals of rule of law are not attainable without regard to procedure. One cannot use unjust means to achieve a just means,” she said.

Public lecture

Prof. Mensa-Bonsu was delivering a public lecture organised by the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) School of Law last Thursday.

It was on the topic: “In the beginning is the word” — A ringside view of the significance of procedural rules and pleadings in the practice of the law.”

The lecture focused on pleadings and the rules of procedures as pertains to witness statements, capacity of a party to initiate an action, appeals, jurisdictions of a court to entertain an action, among other areas of law.

Pleadings

Justice Prof. Mensa-Bonsu said a pleading was how a lawyer appeared before a court and how a party communicated to the court and other parties and, therefore, care should be taken by lawyers to ensure that their pleadings met the standard.

She said pleadings must not be verbose or argumentative, but rather clear, concise, succinct, contain a cause of action and triable issues devoid of grammatical errors.

“A pleading where the language is poorly crafted, contains bad grammar and seeking reliefs that cannot be granted by the court will lead to the suit crashing ,” Prof. Mensa-Bonsu said.

According to her, it was crucial that lawyers proofread their pleadings to avoid grammatical errors and mentioned many instances where a crucial point being canvassed by a lawyer in a pleading had lost its meaning due to grammatical errors.

Procedures

Justice Prof. Mensa-Bonsu further said there was an erroneous impression by lawyers that substantive law principles were more important than the rules of procedure or what was commonly referred to as technicalities.

She said although the courts would normally not allow technicalities to derail the wheel of justice, there was a limit at which the court could overlook procedures.

“If one is to uphold the rule of law and ensure fairness to parties in dispute then one must begin with a respect for laid down principles of procedure, for they set the terrain and define the mode of doing justice,” Prof. Mensa-Bonsu added.

Significance of lecture

For his part, the Dean of the UPSA School of Law, Prof. Kofi Abotsi, said the public lecture was part of the overall strategy of the school to continuously improve teaching, learning and research.

“The UPSA Law school believes in lectures beyond the classroom. We believe in making use of important resources and tapping into the brains of distinguished personalities,” he added.

Writer’s email: [email protected]

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