THE INSIGNIA OF THE NOBILITY IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION
By ALLEN GICHUHI WAIYAKI
The LSK was started with the Mombasa Law Society which was founded in early years. The first High Court was established in Mombasa in 1911 and the legal profession really started at Mombasa. The Mombasa Law Society was a voluntary organization and membership was not mandatory. Later, the lawyers practising in Nairobi formed the Nairobi Law Society which was also a voluntary organization.
The two societies merged sometime in the 1920s to form the Law Society of Kenya which has mandatory membership. Therefore, the LSK was born in 1920s. Currently membership of the Law Society of Kenya numbers to excess of fifteen thousand a tremendous improvement from early days where it started with just a few hundred.
In appreciating that rich history am alive to the fact that a Kenyan advocate is expected to operate in a system of law that relies on the context between each advocate representing his or her client’s positions. The decision that the court will reach therefore can be done successfully only with assistance of a trained advocate.
My reflection in demystifying a lawyer, I mean more than soldiers in the litigation battle. Their office has a high stature, an architect’s creativity and professional sublimity. It calls for lawyering in high dimension.
The Epitome of Professional Standard
During a lawyer’s years of training, it is expected that one maintains their abstemious habits, their allegiance to fidelity in the law should portray an exemplary definition of character. When the time comes for their abilities and acquirements to be tested in their service to mankind it should be a talk of the majority that indeed Justice was done to its core. Their representation of litigants before a court of law should testify to the unimpaired strength and vigor of their mental power.
Thus when an advocate stands before the fact-finder he should be found ten times better in the realm of justice. The most promising advocate when faced with a case to offer legal services should satisfy the threshold of professional ethics and etiquette. The erect form, elastic step, the fair countenance, the undimmed senses, the untainted character,—all these are the insignia of the nobility with which nature honors those who are true to their professional calling.
The legal profession from the past has been a subject of criticism even today. It behooves to note that the perception of the general public is that a lawyer must get on, then get honor and then get honest which is an indicator that a lawyer’s success depends on resorting to dubious methods of winning a case. There is ‘quack’ popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say ‘quack’ because we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears apparent that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. This proposition has a strange sound, not because the lie it contains is strange, but simply because it is a lie so obvious and pervasive that we seldom have occasion to give words to it.
Debunking False Notion about Lawyers
The public perception that the courtroom is not where the truth emerges but where disputes are resolved may on many occasions propel an endless argument. It is my conviction that this notion has made the public opinion of lawyers so dismal. Let us always remember a clique of rogue advocates will not define a profession. We live in a society that breeds all calibers of people. There will be at least one litigant in every lawsuit that walks away grumbling that the system does not work or all lawyers are crooks. Most often a disgruntled litigant will express his disappointment in bitter criticism of the entire legal profession. It is always important for the public to dissociate the emotional and intellectual sides of our reactions, so that any decision will be based entirely on the latter. Dean Swift, a great English satirist, lost a case and said as follows in his celebrated Gulliver’s Travels:
“Lawyers are a society of men bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiple for purpose, that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid”
Conclusion
Our Justice system may not be perfect but that should not translate into generic condemnations that all lawyers are crooks. Justinian, in his introduction to the institutes, proclaimed the following on precept of law; to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due. These words of wisdom form the chief corner stone for the majority of advocates. In so far as the advocate aids in the realization of these rules through courts of law, he performs a cardinal role in the service to this nation.
My appeal to the public; “God works wonders now and then: Behold! A lawyer and an honest man!” Says Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
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ALLEN GICHUHI WAIYAKI
EMERITUS PRESIDENT LSK (2019 0 2020)
