• The organisation came up with the platform to make justice more accessible and cheaper for Kenyans who can not afford legal fees.
• In a medium-sized law firm in Nairobi, the average consultation fee is approximately Sh4,000.
Image: COURTESY/KITUO CHA SHERIA
Do you need legal advice but don’t have the money to hire a lawyer?
You can now have your inquiries attended to by sending an SMS to Haki Mkononi (M-Haki), a platform run by Kituo cha Sheria.
The platform has, during the Covid-19 pandemic period, had 239 legal inquiries. Kituo cha Sheria director Dr Annette Mbogoh says this is a 41 per cent increase over three months.
One sends a message with legal questions and gets answers or advice.
The organisation came up with the platform to make justice more accessible and cheaper for Kenyans who can not afford legal fees.
Mbogoh says M-Haki was founded as a result of high demand for legal assistance and the fact that the organisation could not reach all people due to capacity challenges.
“We would receive as many as 9,000 cases in a year and most of our clients are very disadvantaged. Some do not have bus fare to come to our offices all the time, so we decided to come up with an innovative way to use technology and allow them access to justice,” she told the Star.
The platform, she said, was funded by the Netherlands embassy but the funding ended last December.
Mbogoh hinted that they will seek funding but that if they don’t succeed, they will introduce a minimal fee to help sustain the platform.
Since its inception in March 2016, the platform has served a total of 5,100 cases, she said.
“Filing cases can be very costly and those who do not have the financial muscle end up losing out on justice.”
Filing a case at the Labour Court costs about Sh10,000 whereas the highest court filing fees is Sh70,000.
Lawyers’ fees vary from firm to firm and depend on the value of the subject matter.
First, one has to pay consultation fees to seek audience before paying a fee to open a file if the matter is to go to court.
In a medium-sized law firm in Nairobi, the average consultation fee is approximately Sh4,000.
This is aggravated by the fact that there are few advocates to cater to a population of more than 40 million people.
How M-Haki works
One needs to text their question to 0700777333 for legal advice and the question is automatically uploaded on http://www.m-haki.co.ke . The website is hosted by Ushahidi.
Once the question is sent, it is normally responded within 48 hours by an advocate. The standard SMS costs apply for the text.
According to Kituo cha Sheria, legal questions handled on the M-Haki platform include land rights and succession issues, labour rights, refugee rights and forced migration; housing and evictions.
However, there is an additional general legal category which takes other legal queries.
Questions asked by Kenyans in this category include chiefs demanding bribes to offer services, police turning against citizens, advocates’ misconduct, parents selling land without consideration of their family members among others.
Kituo cha Sheria has four lawyers in Mombasa, three in Pangani and eight in its main office on Ole Odume Road, who all have access to the M-Haki platform and attend to questions.
Mbogoh said that the organisation’s board also has six advocates who support their matters.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, she believes embracing technology to dispense justice is a must.
Apart from M-Haki, they also file cases in court on behalf of Kenyans, she said.
For matters of public interest and human rights, the organisation covers even the cost of filing the case. In an individual welfare case, it provides pro bono lawyers but the filing fee will be paid by the client.
“There are instances where our clients don’t even have filing fees and in such cases, we ask the court to allow us to file pauper brief before we take up the case,” she said.
However, not all cases end up in court as they sometimes use alternative dispute resolution to settle the matters where parties are willing to talk.
“You find a parent who has to make a choice between either using their Sh1,500 to file a case in court or to buy milk. We engage in alternative dispute resolution in such cases where parties are willing,” she said.
The organisation also trains inmates as paralegals to help them help other inmates with legal advice and drafting of court papers.
This has assisted in giving legal aid even as they scale down working from the office and physically meeting with clients due to Covid-19.
"As we wait for the situation to improve, our paralegals are doing a tremendous job. They are also inmates and they offer legal advice so it works well with social distancing."
Edited by R.Wamochie