Kenya School of Law to lose exclusive mandate of offering Bar Examinations for lawyers

MPs seek to amend the law to decentralise administration of bar exams to lawyers from Kenya School of Law.

The Kenya School of Law (KSL) will not continue enjoying exclusive rights to offers qualification exams to lawyers as Parliament moves to liberalise legal training. 

Currently, one can only qualify to be admitted to the bar as an advocate after acquiring a compulsory postgraduate Diploma from KSL.

If MPs approve amendments brought to the House in March and assented to by the President, law students will have options on Advocates Training Programme before qualifying to practice.

The Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Bill 2019, introduced in the National Assembly by Leader of Majority Aden Duale, proposes to amend section 4 of the Kenya School of Law Act, 2012 to open up licensing of lawyer to other education providers.

The section to be deleted mandates the Director of KSL to publish a notice in the Kenya Gazette, in at least one newspaper with a national circulation and in the institution's website, inviting eligible persons to apply for admission for bar training.

The bill also seeks to delete provisions that hitherto empower KSL to determine admission requirements for advocates training as this is a function of the Council of Legal Education (CLE).

The lawmakers want CLE to also administer pre-bar exams for entry into the advocates training programme, a role exclusively played by KSL.

The bill also seeks to amend the Legal Education Act, 2012 to regularise administration of the pre-bar exams.

“It also provides for accreditation of legal education providers for the purpose of licensing advocates training programme to allow other institutions to offer the programme," a memo accompanying the bill states.

Yesterday, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) said the proposed changes will go a long way in liberalising and devolving the legal training.

“It’s a welcome move. There is no need to have people travelling from all over the country to get training in one central place. We need to devolve some of the training,” LSK President Allen Gichuhi said.

A report released by a task force in January 2018 revealed massive failure by law students seeking admission as advocates of the High Court between 2009 to 2016.

The team, chaired by lawyer Fred Ojiambo, showed only 7,530 out of 16,086 students who sat the bar exams passed, translating into a failure rate of 53 per cent.