April 2024 marks my sixth year of working with my current law firm AB LEXMALL & ASSOCIATES. From my journey as a legal intern & research assistant to now being a fully-fledged legal practitioner, I have had the privilege of working on various aspects of law practice. One of the aspects of law practice that my boss and mentor Dr. Kweku Ainuson made me do a lot of work on during my nascent days was writing legal opinions. I passionately undertook this task of writing legal opinions and it became one of my favourites (still is) things to do as an intern and now a lawyer.

When I began my journey of writing legal opinions, it was quite challenging and scary sometimes, especially knowing that someone was going to rely on it to make a decision. If the opinion is not properly written, it could give rise to personal/collective liability (lawyer and the firm). There were times that after spending hours or days researching and writing the first draft of a legal opinion, it would be rubbished after sending it for review and comments. At that point, the difficulty is how to reorganize yourself to amend, vary or draft a completely new opinion, especially knowing you have put your best foot forward in the first draft. However, in all these things I never relented on learning the art of writing a good legal opinion.

I recently worked on a legal opinion for one of Ghana’s leading players in the telecommunication service industry. After I submitted the opinion, I got a lot of positive feedback. I decided to look back on my journey in this aspect of law practice and put together a few things that have helped me over the years. This write-up is intended to serve two purposes. One is to assist lawyers as they navigate writing a good legal opinion. Two, to assist clients in assessing or identifying a good legal opinion. Enjoy.