In a country already suffering a chronic shortage of lawyers, one would expect the Malawi Institute of Legal Education (MILE) and its parent body—the Council for Legal Education—to be working overtime to prepare a new generation of legal minds. Instead, what Malawi has is a catastrophic display of administrative sleepwalking and gross institutional indifference.
Seven months since law graduates sat for their bar exams in November 2024, the results are nowhere in sight. No update. No roadmap. Not even the decency of a vague apology. Students and their families are left suspended in a cruel state of uncertainty—career paths stalled, futures frozen, and mental health fraying.
Onjezani Kenan, a popular social media commentator, ignited public outrage today by sharing a heartfelt letter from a “Concerned Parent.” In it, the parent laments how their child, like dozens of others, remains stuck in an academic purgatory thanks to MILE’s bureaucratic black hole.
“This is psychological torture,” reads the letter. “Is this the future of the legal profession in Malawi? UNIMA (CHANCO) was doing a far better job.”
Indeed, many are now questioning whether dismantling UNIMA’s legal training system in favor of this ill-prepared MILE structure was a colossal blunder. What was meant to be a streamlined bar admission process has instead become a masterclass in administrative ineptitude.
Sources close to the institution whisper of chronic disorganization, underqualified assessors, and a Council for Legal Education that barely functions as more than a ceremonial rubber stamp. “If the Council’s job is to supervise MILE, then they too have failed spectacularly. They are asleep at the wheel—if not already in a coma,” said one frustrated student.
Let’s be blunt: this is not a progressive institution. This is not legal education. It is educational sabotage.
Malawi needs more lawyers—yesterday. Our courts are backlogged, our justice system stretched thin. And yet MILE, which was supposed to help solve this crisis, seems better at generating panic than graduates.
If the Council for Legal Education cannot rise to the occasion, then it must be overhauled, if not entirely dismantled. As for MILE, students deserve more than institutional gaslighting masquerading as rigor.
Justice delayed is justice denied—and MILE is now denying justice not just to students, but to the entire country.
Wake up, MILE. Or make way.
