The Council for Legal Education in Malawi has recommended that graduates from the University of Malawi (UNIMA) and the Catholic University of Malawi (CUNIMA) will no longer be required to pass through the Malawi Institute of Legal Education (MILE) before joining the profession.
Prominent lawyer Khumbo Soko welcomed the decision, arguing it was a matter of common sense. He said the four-year Bachelor of Laws programmes offered by UNIMA and CUNIMA already cover the same ground as MILE. “I don’t see much sense in requiring that person to go and be exposed to the same content for another year,” he said.
However, Soko acknowledged that the ruling could spark controversy, with some viewing it as elitism. He stressed that MILE should instead focus on foreign-trained lawyers, who need orientation into Malawi’s legal system. Legal education, he said, is always tied to a specific jurisdiction. “If you go and study in Uganda or England, the training will be centred on those legal systems. That is why it makes sense for such lawyers to be exposed to the intricacies of our own.”
Soko rejected the idea that this reform undermines the quality of international training. He noted that many foreign universities “outrank local ones by some ridiculous distance.” Instead, he described the new arrangement as both pragmatic and fair—removing unnecessary duplication for local graduates while ensuring that international lawyers are properly grounded in Malawi’s laws.
