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The Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE) has, through a consent judgment, agreed to grant approximately 106 aspiring lawyers an opportunity to re-sit the Legal Practitioners Qualifying Examination (LPQE) after they were previously barred for failing the examination on earlier attempts.
The agreement was recorded before Lusaka High Court Judge Gertrude Chawatama following litigation initiated by affected students who challenged their exclusion under revised ZIALE Student Rules.
Under the consent judgment, ZIALE has undertaken to allow all excluded plaintiffs one additional attempt to re-sit only the heads of the LPQE they failed, subject to compliance with prescribed administrative requirements.
In addition, the Council agreed that candidates who had not exhausted their permissible attempts under the now-revoked Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (Students) Rules of 1985 would be allowed to continue re-sitting failed heads up to a maximum of five attempts, also subject to fulfilling administrative formalities.
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The case was commenced by Astridah Mapepala, Brian Sahuhela, Taic Mwanza, John Akalutu and Emmanuel Musa, who acted on their own behalf and as representatives of other similarly affected students. The applicants sought a High Court order compelling ZIALE to enrol them for repeater examinations in the outstanding heads they had not cleared.
In affidavits filed in support of an originating summons for interpretation, the applicants argued that their exclusion was unlawful and discriminatory.
They stated that although they petitioned ZIALE under Rule 24(7) of the 2021 Student Rules, relying on Rule 37(d), their applications were dismissed without individualised reasons and on the basis of a retrospective application of the new rules.
They further contended that ZIALE’s position was inconsistent with an earlier High Court decision in Chapman Nshitima and Others v Council of the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (2022), in which 50 students who had failed the LPQE three times were allowed to re-sit the examinations after being barred by the Council.
“The exclusion of the students, while others in similar circumstances were allowed to sit, raised serious questions of fairness and legality,” one of the applicants stated in the joint affidavit.
The consent judgment brings the dispute to an end and clears the way for the affected candidates to return to the examination process, marking a significant development in the ongoing debate over access, fairness and regulatory discretion in Zambia’s legal training framework.
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