The High Court of Kenya has quashed regulations earlier passed requiring law school graduates to sit pre entry exams before being admitted to the bar course. The Court has also ordered that all students who previously paid for the pre entries be refunded.
The ruling, delivered by Justice Chacha Mwita, followed a suit filed by a University of Nairobi graduate Mr. Adrian Kamotho Njenga who challenged the validity of Regulation 6 of Kenya’s Advocates Training Programme (ATP) that required law graduates to sit pre entry exams before joining Kenya’s version of our LDC for the bar course. All students who graduate with a law degree are required to do the one-year bar course before they can practice as advocates.
Mr. Njega argued that the Regulation violated Section 16 of the Kenya School of Law Act, 2012, which doesn’t stipulate sitting pre entry exams as part of the requirements for being admitted to the bar course.
According to the KSL Act, a person shall as of right be admitted to the law School if he/she passed the relevant examination of any recognized university in Kenya holds or has become eligible for the conferment of the Bachelor of Laws Degree (LL.B) from that university.
In a case filed by a one Male Mabirizi recently, Justice Yasin Nyanzi of the Uganda High Court declined to quash a similar requirement set by the Law Development Center that obliges law graduates to sit and pass pre-entry exams before joining LDC.
