Legal Education in Sudan after the War: The Justice Committee’s Diagnosis and an Integrated Vision for the Future (2)

Dr Awad Al Hassan Al Nour

This study examines the state of legal education in Sudan during the post-war reconstruction phase, drawing on the Justice Committee’s final report (October 2025) and its supplementary documents. It traces the origins of legal education from the colonial period, focusing on the intellectual diversity among the three historic institutions—the University of Khartoum, the University of Cairo Khartoum Branch, and the Islamic University—before diagnosing the current crisis across six interconnected areas. The study reviews the Committee’s officially adopted recommendations, offers a comparative reading of international models of professional accreditation, and adds new proposals on integrating artificial intelligence and prompt engineering, along with a brief implementation timetable.
First: Introduction
As part of the post-war reconstruction initiative, and in coordination with the University of Khartoum, a number of Sudanese universities and the Office of the Prime Minister, the Justice Committee was formed as one of twelve committees concerned with rebuilding state institutions. Among its seven areas of work—the Constitutional Court, the judiciary, the Public Prosecution, the Ministry of Justice, legal training and transitional justice—the Committee devoted an entire area to the issue of “law school curricula and legal education”, considering it the source from which all other justice institutions draw their professional cadres.
This area of work was based on two supplementary documents: a brief foundational memorandum tracing the history of legal education in Sudan and its principal challenges, prepared by Professor Abdalla Idris; and a more extensive research paper entitled “Legal Education in Sudan: Reality and Aspirations”, prepared by a specialised committee, in addition to the official recommendations adopted by the Justice Committee itself in its final report. This article brings these three sources together in a single, accessible narrative, while adding contemporary perspectives on artificial intelligence and prompt engineering, along with a proposed implementation plan, in preparation for wider discussion among interested stakeholders.
Second: The Roots of the Problem – How Did Sudanese Legal Education Develop?
This section is based primarily on the paper “The Current State of Legal Education and the Case for Reform”, prepared by Professor Abdalla Idris, Chairman of the Justice Committee, former Minister of Justice and Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Khartoum.
Historical Origins and Development
Legal education in Sudan began in the colonial period, when a department of Sharia judiciary was established after the enactment of the Sharia Courts Act in 1902. A school to train civil court judges was established in 1936 and later developed into the Faculty of Law at the University of Khartoum in 1947. Alongside this, the Faculty of Sharia emerged, before the various streams were eventually merged into a single Bachelor of Laws degree in 1972.
In parallel with this development, legal education evolved early along two other important tracks.
First, the University of Cairo, Khartoum Branch, established in 1955, adopted the curriculum of its parent institution in Cairo, based on Egyptian law with French legal foundations. It thus introduced a comparative dimension distinct from the Sudanese-English legal tradition followed by the University of Khartoum.
Second, the Islamic University, now Omdurman Islamic University, developed from religious institutes into a comprehensive university and distinguished itself through a foundational approach that combined Islamic jurisprudence with positive law. This enabled it to represent a different intellectual school in understanding and applying law.
This diversity of intellectual origins—which itself reflects Sudan’s cultural diversity—became the subject of longstanding debate concerning the unification of legal education. A committee was formed in 1976 specifically to address differences in curricula and legal thought among these three institutions, amid concern that they might produce “professional divisions and conflicts in Sudanese legal thought” that could affect the administration of justice.
This intellectual diversity—largely overlooked in many subsequent diagnoses—is integral to the crisis of legal education. It is no less important than quantitative expansion because it raises a fundamental question: What law are we teaching?
The Higher Education Revolution and Its Consequences
The three principal law schools continued to produce Sudanese legal professionals until the 1980s, when the so-called “Higher Education Revolution” of 1989 dramatically expanded student admissions and permitted private-sector investment in higher education.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Higher Education cited in the relevant documents, the number of law faculties and departments in the country subsequently reached 54: 29 in public universities, six in private universities and 19 departments within other university faculties. Thus, approximately 34 per cent of higher education institutions in Sudan came to include a faculty or department of law.
Professor Idris describes this expansion as “random” and considers it the principal cause of the deterioration in overall standards. He notes that most of these institutions lack the minimum number of qualified academic staff and rely heavily on part-time lecturers drawn from practising lawyers. Some curricula fail even to cover essential legal subjects. The Faculty of Law at the Sudan Open University, for example, does not require a minimum level of achievement in the Sudanese School Certificate for admission, yet its graduates are permitted to sit the professional qualifying examination.
“Law Is a Profession Like Medicine and Engineering”
One of the most important comparisons advanced in Professor Idris’s paper is that law should be treated in the same way as medicine and engineering. A graduate of a faculty of engineering, for example, is not automatically entitled to practise as an engineer merely by obtaining a degree. Professional registration depends on recognition by the relevant engineering council, which must itself verify that the institution satisfies requirements relating to curricula and academic qualifications.
The paper argues that the same logic should apply to law.
The paper also reveals an important historical background: the Legal Studies Committee had previously prepared, in consultation with a number of official and professional bodies, a draft law establishing a Council for Legal Studies with the authority to accredit law schools. The Minister of Justice at the time, Dr Awad Al Hassan, welcomed the proposal, but the judiciary’s leadership opposed it without explaining its reasons.
The paper concludes that the bodies currently responsible for supervising legal education have failed to halt the increase in the number of law schools or the continuing decline in standards because their decisions, unlike those of a binding professional council, remain merely recommendations that can be ignored.
Third: An Integrated Diagnosis – Where Does the Crisis Lie?
Drawing on both Professor Idris’s paper and “Legal Education in Sudan: Reality and Aspirations”, the crisis can be grouped into six interconnected areas.
1. Quantitative Expansion versus Declining Quality
The number of law schools and law students has increased steadily without a corresponding expansion in the number of qualified lecturers or available resources. The documents point to the results of the Legal Profession Qualifying Examination as evidence of this deterioration.
The report further states that the total planned intake across all law faculties in the country for the current academic year reached approximately 12,876 students—an increase of 1,187 per cent over the number admitted before the Higher Education Revolution, and 1,270 per cent since the beginning of that expansion.
2. The Crisis of Qualified Academic Staff
The migration of qualified academics for economic reasons, the suspension of overseas scholarships and the decline in the recruitment of foreign professors—as had occurred during the early decades of the University of Khartoum Faculty of Law—have forced most law schools to rely heavily on part-time practising lawyers, many of whom lack formal academic training.
The studies indicate that 99 per cent of law faculties fail to meet minimum standards for infrastructure and academic qualifications.
3. Weakness in Both Languages
The documents diagnose a dual linguistic problem. The state’s 1990 Arabisation policy was not accompanied by sufficient development of Arabic legal terminology. At the same time, English standards declined, despite the language’s importance for understanding legislation and precedents inherited from the English legal system and for participation in regional and international legal practice.
According to the paper, insufficient English-language competence has even contributed to Sudan losing international legal cases, with the oil pipeline agreement dispute cited as an example.
It is estimated that 99 per cent of law schools do not teach legal courses in English.
4. The Absence of Institutional Quality Control
No central body has binding authority to accredit law schools or suspend institutions that fail to meet required standards. The proposed Council for Legal Studies was designed to address precisely this deficiency, but its establishment was obstructed.
Estimates indicate that 99 per cent of law schools do not meet the standards of the “model law school” developed by the Legal Studies Committee in 2016.
5. The Disconnect between Education and the Needs of the Profession
Curricula are weakly connected to practical legal training, including moot courts, legal clinics, and field placements. Legal research remains underdeveloped, while curricula have failed to keep pace with legislative and technological developments such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
Law schools also suffer from inadequate funding, as the state has not fulfilled the proposed commitment to allocate 4 per cent of national income to higher education.
6. Weaknesses in the Postgraduate System
Postgraduate legal education faces a complex range of problems, including weak infrastructure and libraries, outdated curricula, deficiencies in academic supervision, poor research skills, the absence of specialised programmes, weak links with development plans and labour-market needs, inadequate funding and difficult political and economic conditions.
Unplanned expansion in postgraduate programmes has also contributed to declining academic standards, and some qualifications awarded by Sudanese universities are no longer recognised internationally.
Fourth: From the Model to Reality – The Gap in the “Model Law School”
The Legal Studies Committee deserves credit for developing, in 2016, specifications for a “model law school”. These covered educational objectives, graduate competencies and essential requirements, including a stimulating learning environment, computer laboratories, safety and security, appropriately qualified academic staff in proportion to student numbers, modern curricula subject to regular review, and controls over admissions based on institutional capacity and the country’s actual need for graduates.
Yet the gap between this model and the reality of most existing institutions remains wide. The studies estimate that 99 per cent of law schools fail to meet these standards.
Fifth: What Did the Committee Recommend?
The Justice Committee adopted 29 detailed recommendations concerning legal education. These may be grouped under the following headings.
(A) Governance and Control of Expansion
Review the large number of existing law faculties and departments through mechanisms of self-assessment and programme and institutional accreditation.
Suspend the establishment of new law schools for a reasonable period while investing in the training of academic staff, both domestically and abroad, and improving their conditions of service.
Expedite the enactment of the proposed Council for Legal Studies Act, granting the Council genuine authority to accredit law schools.
Activate Article 6 of the Legal Profession Act of 1966, which provides for verification of professional competence.
Suspend approval for the establishment of new faculties or departments of law and review existing institutions in accordance with the recommendations of the Legal Studies Committee and comprehensive quality and accreditation standards.
(B) Curricula and Academic Programmes
Standardise curricula and core subjects in legal education to serve Sudan’s justice system and strengthen the country’s legal standing domestically and internationally.
Link curricula to their economic and social environment by incorporating disciplines such as economics, sociology, computing and public administration.
Reflect federal and regional dimensions—for example, giving law schools in northern states greater attention to land law, those in western Sudan to customary law, and those in eastern Sudan to maritime law—while maintaining a unified national framework.
Develop a specific national curriculum for public international law addressing Sudan’s border and maritime issues.
Adopt the credit-hour system to provide greater flexibility in academic programmes.
Ensure that curricula and teaching methods combine theoretical, practical and comparative approaches, with regular curriculum review and updating.
Justice Mohammed Mahmoud Abu Qussaissa, former Deputy Chief Justice and former member of the Constitutional Court, recently offered a significant view on this issue in his book Memoirs on the Judiciary and Law. Discussing the teaching of Sudanese legislation in Sudanese universities—and drawing on his experience as a member of the Faculty Council of Law at the University of Juba—he observed the weakness of legal practitioners’ knowledge of Sudanese legislation, asking in effect: how can such weak knowledge exist when there are so many universities teaching law in Sudan?
He emphasised that knowledge of national law is essential for those who prosecute, defend or adjudicate disputes. Law, he argued, is not simply another academic subject comparable to disciplines dependent on laboratories or universal sciences that transcend national borders. The study of law is a symbol of sovereignty and belonging, and ultimately concerns administering justice and fairness between litigants before Sudanese courts, which must adjudicate under Sudanese legislation.
He cited an important case before the Supreme Court, noting that the appeal took little time to resolve because the dispute was not governed by the Civil Transactions Act at all, but by the Urban Planning Act and the Interpretation of Laws and General Clauses Act.
I strongly endorse my teacher, Justice Abu Qussaissa, in calling for greater attention to Sudanese legislation in legal education, including legislation directly affecting the rights of Sudanese citizens, such as the Urban Planning Act, whose importance for the development of land administration and related fields cannot be overstated.
(C) Teaching Methods
Adopt participatory and interactive methods, including the Socratic method, problem-based learning and the analysis of real cases, instead of relying exclusively on lecture-based teaching.
Expand experiential learning through community legal clinics dealing with urgent local issues such as land grabbing, human rights and environmental disputes.
Establish mentorship programmes involving trusted legal professionals.
Introduce digital transformation gradually through e-learning platforms, simulation programmes and courses on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital analysis.
Use digital technology in teaching and base academic assessment on a combination of coursework and written examinations.
(D) Languages and Postgraduate Studies
Give serious attention to high standards in both Arabic and English, while providing space for other languages of legal relevance.
Retrain academic staff in English and exclude those who fail to meet the required standards.
Accelerate implementation of the 2022 Postgraduate Studies Regulations and support specialisation and comparative studies at Master’s and doctoral levels.
Review and modernise postgraduate regulations, suspend or close unqualified programmes, require a minimum standard of English and an aptitude examination for admission, and reconsider the current system of academic supervision.
(E) Quality, Funding and Infrastructure
Activate quality-assurance and self-evaluation units within law schools and link them to the proposed Council for Legal Studies.
Increase the budget allocated to higher education to at least 4 per cent of national income and diversify funding through private-sector partnerships, consultancy units and endowments.
Ensure full disbursement of approved budgets for public law faculties.
Connect the libraries of justice institutions and law schools through a unified information network and subscribe to international legal databases such as LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Activate alumni units to bring professional experience into law schools and support them financially.
(F) Admissions
Introduce a special admissions system for law schools and establish a central body to administer aptitude and English-language examinations as prerequisites for admission, in addition to secondary-school requirements.
Reduce planned admissions while reviewing the status and capacity of existing institutions.
Require minimum grades in both Arabic and English, rather than mere passes.
Standardise academic admission requirements across law schools.
(G) Legal Research and Community Service
Strengthen legal research and integrate it into academic programmes, while improving its quality at postgraduate level.
Encourage rigorous research and publication by academic staff and establish or support research centres affiliated with law faculties.
Develop academic and research partnerships between law schools, justice institutions and the Judicial and Legal Training Institute.
Prevent political interference that affects the freedom of legal and Sharia research and publication.
Support and modernise traditional and electronic legal libraries and connect them to legal databases and information platforms.
Sixth: A Missing Link – The Qualifying Examination and the Ministry of Justice’s Recommendations
Alongside the two papers dealing specifically with legal education, a separate paper prepared by the Committee on the status and role of the Ministry of Justice addressed a closely related issue: the transition from graduation to the actual practice of law, through what is commonly known as the “equivalency” or professional qualifying examination.
Under Article 6 of the Legal Profession Act of 1966, the relevant council has the authority to verify that those practising the legal profession possess a high level of professional competence. However, the paper observes that, since its establishment more than half a century ago, the Council’s work has largely been confined in practice to organising the professional qualifying examination, covering seven legal subjects under Article 4 of the Act, without developing into a genuine mechanism for accrediting or recognising law schools.
The paper identifies several shortcomings:
Graduates of any law school may sit the examination, including graduates of distance-learning institutions.
No maximum number of attempts is permitted to pass the examination.
Exemptions from some examination subjects may be granted too readily.
No accredited institution requires compulsory theoretical or practical training before sitting the examination.
Those who pass the examination are not required to undergo compulsory training before beginning practice.
This differs from many international systems, including those of the United States, Britain, Germany and France, where practical training periods—often ranging from one to three years—are required after examination and before full professional licensing.
The result, according to the paper, is wide variation in practitioner quality and deficiencies in basic practical skills such as case management and dealing with clients and litigants.
Ministry of Justice Recommendations
The recommendations concerning this area are intended to complement those relating to legal education. The most important include:
Reviewing the Legal Profession Act so that it combines practical training within law schools with field experience.
Introducing professional ethics and English as core components.
Establishing accreditation standards for academic curricula and professional training, modelled on international professional accreditation systems and developed by the Ministry of Justice in cooperation with the Legal Profession Council and higher education institutions.
Establishing a Judicial and Legal Academy as a unified scientific institution responsible for compulsory and continuing training standards for all state legal personnel, with independent examination committees to strengthen competence and integrity.
Making use of proposed digital solutions, including the digitisation of judicial precedents and legislation and making them available through intelligent platforms.
Supporting legal research through artificial intelligence technologies in cooperation with universities and research centres.
This issue demonstrates that reforming legal education and reforming the gateway to professional licensing are two sides of the same coin. Even if law schools improve gradually, as the earlier recommendations propose, the professional gateway itself requires parallel reform. Without limits on attempts to pass, and without compulsory training before or after the examination, it cannot properly serve as the final guarantee of professional quality.
Seventh: Comparative Models – How Do Professional Bodies Operate in Advanced Countries?
Since the recommendations propose a Sudanese professional body with authority to accredit law schools, it is useful to consider two influential comparative models, particularly in order to identify which aspects might support the objective of strengthening existing institutions rather than simply closing them.
The American Model: The American Bar Association (ABA)
Since 1952, the accrediting body within the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has been recognised by the United States Department of Education as the official accreditor of Juris Doctor programmes nationwide.
A key feature of this model is that federal rules require the accrediting body to make decisions independently of the professional association from which it emerged. Thus, a professional framework does not necessarily mean direct institutional control; professional authority can coexist with operational independence.
The accrediting body operates under published, regularly updated standards and rules covering curricula, academic qualifications, infrastructure, and bar-examination performance.
Most importantly for Sudan’s context, accreditation is not granted or withdrawn in a single, abrupt decision. The process may begin with provisional accreditation, followed by years of site visits, periodic evaluation and monitoring before full accreditation is granted.
In other words, the principal instrument of the professional council is not closure but improvement plans with timeframes and ongoing oversight.
The British Model: The Solicitors Regulation Authority and the SQE
Since 2021, England and Wales have followed a different approach that may be particularly relevant to Sudan’s large number of law schools.
Rather than allowing each university to determine graduates’ professional eligibility through the former qualifying law degree model, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has separated the academic degree from professional licensing. A graduate may obtain an academic law degree from a range of institutions, but qualification as a solicitor must proceed through a centralised national route based on the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), administered independently of universities, together with the requirement of two years of qualifying work experience.
The advantage of this approach is that it does not require closing every institution of uneven quality to maintain professional standards. Law schools may continue teaching and admitting students, but a rigorous, unified national gateway ensures that only those who meet a common professional standard can enter practice.
What Can Sudan Learn from Both Models?
Sudan could combine elements of both approaches:
Adopt a gradual and conditional accreditation process, similar to the American model, rather than immediate administrative closure: provisional accreditation, an improvement period, follow-up monitoring and eventual full accreditation—or withdrawal only where serious non-compliance persists.
Strengthen the existing Sudanese professional qualifying examination, rather than creating an entirely new gateway, by imposing stricter controls: a limit on the number of attempts, careful scrutiny of exemptions and compulsory practical training before and after the examination.
Transform the examination into a genuinely unified national professional gateway, similar in principle to the SQE, so that the value of a professional licence does not depend on the varying quality of the law school from which a candidate graduated.
Publish periodic and transparent performance data for every law school, including graduates’ pass rates in the professional examination and the proportion of qualified academic staff, using transparency and reputational competition as additional tools for improving standards.
Preserve the technical independence of the proposed professional council from direct professional, administrative or political pressures.
This last point is particularly important, especially in light of the Committee’s own observation that an unexplained objection from the leadership of the judiciary obstructed an earlier attempt to establish a similar body.
Eighth: New Recommendations – Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Prompt Engineering
In light of global digital transformation, and in keeping with the Committee’s recommendations concerning teaching methods and digital transformation, this paper proposes the following additional recommendations.
Proposed Recommendation 30: Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Law School Curricula
A. Academic Courses
Introduce a compulsory course entitled “Legal Applications of Artificial Intelligence”, covering:
Advanced legal research using AI tools, including Westlaw, LexisNexis and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques.
Automated analysis of legal documents and contracts.
Digital law and ethics, including copyright, algorithmic bias and responsibility for AI-generated outputs.
Relevant international quality standards, including ISO/IEC 42001 for artificial intelligence management systems.
B. Prompt Engineering
Students should be trained in the systematic formulation of instructions, or prompts, for large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, in ways that improve the accuracy and reliability of legal outputs and reduce the risks associated with AI hallucinations.
Particular emphasis should be placed on the principle of mandatory human review, under which AI-generated material is treated only as a preliminary draft requiring verification and review by a qualified legal professional.
C. Digital Infrastructure
A national platform for legal artificial intelligence should be established through coordination between the Ministry of Justice, the judiciary and universities. The platform could provide:
Digitised legislation and judicial precedents with intelligent search and analytical capabilities.
Interactive moot courts using AI simulations to generate advanced and realistic training scenarios.
D. A National Ethical Charter
A national ethical charter should be developed to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in legal education and professional practice, defining responsibilities and safeguards in accordance with international standards and the requirements of the Legal Profession Act.
Ninth: A Brief Implementation Plan
The proposed reform programme could be implemented over five years, divided into three stages.
Stage One: The First Year
Urgent measures should include:
Suspending approval for new law schools.
Enacting the Council for Legal Studies Act.
Establishing a national review committee.
Stage Two: The Following Two Years
The focus should be on:
Standardising core curricula.
Introducing the credit-hour system.
Beginning the training and development of academic staff.
Introducing artificial intelligence and related courses.
Stage Three: The Final Two Years
The final stage should focus on:
Completing institutional and programme accreditation.
Establishing the Judicial and Legal Academy.
Developing a unified national professional qualifying examination.
Funding
Over the five-year period, estimated expenditure could be distributed as follows:
40 per cent for infrastructure development;
25 per cent for staff training and overseas scholarships;
20 per cent for digital technologies and artificial intelligence;
15 per cent for libraries and legal databases.
Funding could be mobilised through an increase in the higher education budget to 4 per cent of national income, private-sector partnerships, endowment funds and international reconstruction assistance.
National Dialogue
A national conference on justice could be held over six to nine months, bringing together academics, judges, lawyers, law students and civil society representatives. This could be followed by three months of specialised workshops to develop detailed proposals and two months of consultations in the states to ensure that federal and regional dimensions are properly reflected.
The final outcomes could then be submitted to policymakers.
The Role of the State
The state’s role should operate at three levels:
Legislatively: Enact the Council for Legal Studies Act and amend the Legal Profession Act.
Executively: Commit to financing the reform programme, provide the necessary infrastructure and guarantee the independence of both the proposed Academy and the Council.
In terms of oversight: Monitor implementation through annual reports presented to Parliament and the public, while publishing institutional performance data and national examination results to promote transparency and create positive pressure for improvement.
Tenth: A Further Reading – What Requires Wider Discussion?
As can be seen, legal education is deeply intertwined with professional training within justice institutions, and the way advanced systems address this relationship, as well as the Ministry of Justice’s responsibilities for regulating the legal profession, raises a number of complex and potentially contentious issues.
However, I hope that discussion will, for the present, remain focused on legal education itself.
I shall address the issue of professional and institutional training in the third article, God willing.

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