A Bar Course graduate has formally written to the Director of the Law Development Centre refusing to pay the UGX 400,000 graduation clearance fee announced by the Academic Registrar on May 11, 2026 — and he has done it with the precision of someone who just spent a year studying legal practice.
Prosper Ahabwe Julian, Bar Course 2024–2025, submitted his letter on May 28, 2026. It was received and stamped by the Director’s Office the same day. In it, he argues that the graduation fee was never part of the contract he signed with LDC, that demanding it now is contractually wrong, and that if the institution does not withdraw the fee, the courts of law are available for exactly this kind of dispute.
Ahabwe Julian’s case rests on a straightforward contractual position, and he makes it without flinching.
In September 2024, he entered a contract with LDC for the study and award of a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice. The contract stipulated a total payable fee of UGX 6,000,000 — as provided for on the admission form. He paid. He attended. He observed the rules governing the Bar Course as amended. He qualified for the award of the graduate diploma.
Then, on May 11, 2026, the Academic Registrar published a notice requiring Bar Course graduands to pay an additional UGX 400,000 as graduation clearance fees.
“I was shocked to see a communication requiring me to pay an additional Shs. 400,000 which was not part of the contract,” he writes.
His legal reasoning from that point is tight. He fulfilled his contractual obligations. LDC is therefore bound to fulfil its own — which includes formally awarding him the diploma he qualified for. Conditioning that award on a payment that was never agreed upon at contract formation is, he argues, not only contractually wrong but amounts to transactional dishonesty and defies free consent.
“Demanding payment of Shs. 400,000 as a condition precedent for the institution to carry on its contractual obligations to their logical conclusion is not only contractually wrong but also amounts to transactional dishonesty as well as defies free consent,” the letter reads.
Ahabwe Julian closes his letter with a line that only lands with full weight when you remember he is a trained lawyer writing to a law institution.
“Unfortunately, our contract does not provide for a dispute resolution mechanism. However, the courts of law are open to such contractual disputes.”
He is not threatening loudly. He is informing calmly — which, in legal writing, is more dangerous.
His prayer to the Director is simple: withdraw the UGX 400,000 fee, carry out the institution’s mandate to its logical conclusion, and award him the diploma he has already earned and already paid for.
The UGX 400,000 graduation clearance fee affects every Bar Course 2024–2025 graduate at LDC — a cohort that includes some of Uganda’s most recently qualified lawyers, many of whom are already dealing with the financial weight of having paid UGX 6 million in tuition fees while completing a mandatory professional qualification year.
A graduation fee introduced after contracts were signed, after fees were paid, and after qualifications were earned raises a question that goes beyond one student’s objection: on what legal basis can an institution impose a new financial condition on students who have already fulfilled every term of their original agreement?
Ahabwe Julian has asked that question formally, in writing, to the Director’s face. The Director’s Office has received and stamped the letter.
LDC has not yet publicly responded.
A law school charging its newly qualified lawyers an unlisted graduation fee — and receiving a letter from one of those lawyers arguing the charge is contractually invalid — is the kind of story that writes itself.
If LDC does not withdraw the fee, the next chapter gets written in a courtroom. And the person arguing the case will have learned everything he knows about contracts at LDC itself.
