A SOLICITOR who qualified in Britain has secured permission from the High Court to challenge the refusal to grant him a certificate required to allow him to practise law here.
Olakunle Olubokun claims he was failed in an eligibility exam although an external examiner had passed him. Mr Olubokun, who qualified in England and Wales in 2005 and is employed here as a civil servant with the Legal Aid Board, sat two exams in June last year as required by the Law Society to obtain a certificate of eligibility to practise.
In an affidavit, Mr Olubokun said he passed one exam but was marked 44 per cent on the second, probate and taxation law. A mark of 51 per cent was required to pass. He obtained a recheck but was told the 44 per cent mark stood.
He asked for details of what marks were awarded by the external examiner to the six questions on the paper but was refused. He then asked for the help of the Data Protection Commissioner.
In March, the Law Society provided a breakdown of the marks the external examiner had put on the front of the paper and these added up to 308 marks, or 51 per cent, a pass, Mr Olubokun said.
His solicitor was told the marks put on the front of an exam paper were just one method of assessing whether that paper merited a pass mark. While external examiners are asked to mark each question, they are also asked to give their views on whether the initial mark is “a fair reflection” of the candidate’s standard, the society told him.
Despite granting higher marks than those given by the internal examiner, it was the external examiner’s view the original 244 mark (44 per cent) was a fair reflection of Mr Olubokun’s standard. The society suggested he should resit the exam but he declined and when it offered a third examiner to review his paper, he also refused, saying his difficulty was not with the external examiner but with the procedure adopted and the unreasonableness of decisions made within the framework of that procedure.
