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The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has gone ballistic over corrupt judges. The Judiciary has made a mockery of justice. This column has over the years called for drastic action to clean up the Judiciary and restore confidence in a badly broken system.

There are too many bad rulings. The work rate on the Bench is very poor and cases just keep piling up. The small claims court, launched with so much hope, has completely degenerated into a place where the accused big boys simply pay less in bribes to avoid paying what they owe SMEs.

Public complaints mean nothing to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). No chief justice, especially those appointed after the 2010 Constitution was adopted and from whom so much was expected, has had the courage to confront this mess. Not Dr Willy Mutunga, not David Kenani Maraga, and clearly, Martha Karambu Koome is not prepared to be the first.

Flip the coin and come to the Bar – the LSK. The Bar is a brood of vipers. Lawyers have destroyed the lives of many Kenyans through fraud and sheer chicanery.

Stealing from clients, greed and overcharging is legendary. Lawyers have been accused of facilitating the bribing of judges to subvert justice. Indeed, word around town is that there are lawyers whose case outcome is assured because they “know how to speak” to judges.

The government has been pressuring the LSK to get lawyers to stop being used to facilitate money laundering and distribution of proceeds of corruption, a vice against which, cynically, the Society is so vocal. Prominent lawyers have been accused of facilitating drug dealers to bribe to evade justice.

The issue of lawyers stealing money from clients is so bad that it needs to be declared a national crisis! There are lawyers who have cases upon cases of misconduct and keep getting their certificates renewed by the LSK, enabling them to continue swindling Kenyans. Disciplinary cases against lawyers filed at the LSK take forever to resolve.

Hundreds of lawyers have been struck off as advocates, but Kenyans do not know who they are. So, they keep swindling clients. The LSK, as a champion of transparency, must go out of its way to publicise all lawyers who have been struck off to protect Kenyans.

The LSK maintains a deafening silence against this rot in its own stable. Hapless Kenyans have very little recourse against rotten lawyers. The current onslaught against the Chief Justice by certain lawyers is simply because for the first time, there is a holder in that office whose will they have been unable to bend to their whims! Thus the very uncivil and rude language. Yet the LSK sees nothing wrong with very foul language being used against judicial officers.

LSK chair Faith Odhiambo is launching a probe into corruption and misconduct of judicial officers countrywide from January 2025. This is a waste of time and money, and merely a ploy to hoodwink Kenyans. Nothing will come out of it. The LSK has zero moral authority to point fingers at JSC. The two have been in bed together for decades ripping off hapless Kenyans.

If she is really sincere about overhauling the rot in the legal profession, she should invite a diverse group of independent professional bodies like the Institution of Engineers of Kenya, Kenya Medical Association, Institute of Certified Public Accountants and others to form a fully independent probe committee to overhaul the rotten legal system.

This committee should travel countrywide to ask Kenyans the kind of legal system they want, and how they want lawyers and judicial officers to behave going forward. The committee should be financed by both the JSC and the LSK so that they both own the recommendations.

To paraphrase Odhiambo, the probe must achieve “drastic full scale changes in the operations of both the Judiciary and the LSK by shaking the trees so that the bad fruits fall”. Both trees have very rotten fruits! This is the challenge by Kenyans to both the LSK and the JSC. Stop finger pointing and clean up your act!

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