Apart from renowned lawyers like James Orengo, Paul Muite and a couple of others, many lawyers in Kenya are struggling to survive even after passing from the most feared, Kenya School of Law. The law profession is not as glittering as it used to be, in fact it’s becoming more useless over time.
We have established that despite law being one of the most decorated careers in the country,several qualified lawyers are still languishing in poverty. In Nairobi for instance, if you walk around Milimani Law Courts and any other court within the city, you will notice several lawyers walking aimlessly as they look for clients. To make matters worse, they charge as low as Ksh500 to represent a client in court. This situation is also not uncommon in various parts of the country.
Data collected from various law firms in the country show that some law firms, in fact a third, pay fresh law graduates as little as Ksh20, 000 per month. This money is what the educated lawyer is supposed to spend on accommodation, transport, suits and many other expenses, but the poor lawyer has not otherwise because jobs are scarce in this country.
Over two decades ago, law degree used to be ranked highly. People like Orengo use intimidate professionals from other fields to the extent of dominating in everything they do-those days are over now. Today’s lawyer is a hustler like anyone doing ordinary jobs, he cannot even afford a decent car…but what exactly brought them to this fix? The answer is simple, parallel programs, which saw the moneyed take their children for prestigious courses, resulting to dilution of the career.
You will be surprised that an accountant earns 10 times what an ordinary lawyer pockets, which is totally different from what we used to experience some times back. Now, in terms of ranking, the career has dropped from position 2 to position 7, slightly below procurement.
