The Spirit Behind the Philosophy

“Defend the Poor and the Fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.” Psalm 82:3-4 (King James Version)

This verse of the BIBLE is quoted at the tail end of our official letterhead. Many colleagues have asked me why I would choose to have such a passage written as part of our official letterhead.

The answer is simple. This verse espouses the very reason why I joined the legal profession. But before then, let me give you a brief history about myself.

Growing up in the small but growing town called Eldoret, I always wanted to be a doctor. I loved the way doctors handled patients, and the impact medical practitioners had on society. I loved the respect that they would command. I grew up desiring to be both a missionary and a professional. I wanted to figure out a way in which I would be able to share GOD through the impact I would have in people’s lives.

However, GOD had other plans for me. He graciously closed all the doors that would lead me to medical school and instead opened up a clear way for me to join law school. My story as to how I joined law school will be the subject of another article.

Suffice it to say for now, once I knew that I was going to be a lawyer, I decided to figure out a way that would enable me to have maximum impact on the lives of people around me. I decided that I would seek to touch lives as much as possible.

One such way is through coming up with an access to justice platform.  Access to justice in Kenya is a mirage to many Kenyans who are not able to afford to pay hefty legal fees. This is especially so with regard to family and children law.

To this end, we designed a program that would try to ensure that as many as possible would be able to have access to quality legal advice and representation.

We introduced FREE legal clinics every Tuesday and Thursdays where we meet clients and discuss their cases and help them come up with strategies for free. This is more so with regard to family and children law.

We also introduced a legal training series that runs every Friday afternoon where we train persons who would wish to learn how to self represent in court. The classes cover concepts such as basic civil procedure and the law relating to adduction of evidence as well as the basics of trial advocacy.

Lastly as a firm, we have a pro-bono scheme where we identify cases that are too technical for persons to self represent, in which cases we do offer representation to such clients pro-bono, where they are unable to pay for themselves.

As a firm, we do not have any external funding and we thus rely on paying clients, and the revenue that we generate from legal work to keep the pro-bono scheme running. We also do not turn down any clients on the basis of their financial inability to pay.

This is our own small way of touching lives, one life at a time.  It does sometimes get discouraging but the motivation to succeed keeps us going. We do explore opportunities of working with corporate entities as an income generation mechanism and we look forward to more such collaborations.

GOD is the Spirit and motivation behind this philosophy.

For now, we continue with our goal to touch as many lives as we possibly can through the offering of high level legal advice and representation to all regardless of ability to pay.

“Your success is directly proportional to the number of lives that you have touched for the better” ( Per Vishwas Chavan Vishwasutras: Universal Principles of Living: Inspired by Real-Life Experiences)