WHAT MAKES OUR PRACTICE DIFFERENT?

I have always believed in practicing law in a different kind of way. There are hundreds of thousands of lawyers and law firms in the world. All firms established with different intentions, mostly to make money and to get rich and wealthy. Now, there is nothing wrong with getting rich and wealthy.  However, I believe that there is much more to life than making money and getting rich and wealthy.

I believe that lawyers are wield a unique power to be agents of positive change to society. Lawyers can use the law as a tool for social engineering. I at times wonder how the world would be if everyone had legal knowledge and understood both the letter and the spirit of the law. I believe that there would be less injustice.

When I founded Begi’s Law Offices & Chambers, my dream was to use this firm as a means for promoting access to justice, especially indigent persons who may not be able to afford legal representation. I believe that justice ceases to have meaning when it is far from reach. Growing up as a child, I witnessed sad situations where the wealthy and affluent trampled on the rights of the indigent, simply because the indigent either lacked legal knowledge to fight back, or lacked the financial means to secure quality legal representation.

In Kenya, we have various organizations that do offer legal aid to indigent persons. However, due to the structural challenges, such services are sometimes not of good quality. I once had a client walk into my office. She had sought help from one organization that offers legal aid. One year down the road, nothing had come good of her case. I do believe that there is no point in having legal aid when the aid means that the client does not have good quality representation that they would be entitled to had they been paying for services.

Thus, Begi’s Law Offices & Chambers, sought to do things differently. We sought to find a way to render good quality representation to indigent persons, without affecting our ability to remain liquid and afloat.

The Balance

First, we decided to take in persons who cannot afford legal representation, but who, with a little training and guidance, would be able to represent themselves effectively in court. These are persons who, though indigent, have some level of education, with relatively straight-forward cases.

Our self-representation training classes would happen every Friday, between 14h00 and 16h00.  This went well until the COVID-19 Pandemic hit the world and physical meetings could no longer happen. We then decided to do an online self-representation training which was very successful.

We then introduced a bi-weekly legal aid clinic. The purpose of this clinic is to aid persons who need accurate legal advice, but cannot afford to pay for the same, to be able to access. This mainly benefits indigent persons who need help with regard to family and children and the law. The clinic still runs every Tuesday and Thursday.

Lastly, we started offering active litigation representation for indigent persons, who may not be able to effectively represent themselves due to the complexity of the case. This is for example, where the opposing side has hired legal representation. We offer active representation in line with our legal aid policy guidelines and checklist.

The Economies of Scale

As we are a law practice, we do not receive any donor funding. That means that we must somehow raise the funds to be able to sustain our pro-bono/legal aid program. We do this by ensuring that we offer very high-quality legal representation to paying clients, and then use fees from the clients to be able to sustain the legal aid/pro-bono program.

We also partner with corporations and corporate entities, not for donor funding but for work. Thus when corporate clients hire us, they do so knowing very well that the money paid to us in legal fees, goes towards supporting increased access to justice through our program. Thus corporate companies get double benefit. They benefit from high-quality legal work, as well as they increase their CSR Portfolio by having supported an increase in access to justice.

CONCLUSION

I have always believed in brightening the corner where one is. Touching lives is my passion. I do hope that the spirit of service to humanity and increase in access to justice will catch on to other law firms.