A Personal Essay in Law & Life Behind the Wig & Gown: What Your Lawyer Carries Home
Purity K. Mbaabu & Associates Advocates · Advocates of the High Court of Kenya
My alarm goes off at 5:47 a.m. Before I even pour my first cup of tea, my phone has already lit up with three WhatsApp messages. One is from a widow who couldn't sleep; she just found out her late husband's brothers are challenging the will. One is from a businessman whose property sale is collapsing at the eleventh hour. One is a voice note, fourteen minutes long, from a woman sobbing between words as she describes what her husband did. It is not yet 6 a.m., and I am already carrying other people's entire worlds.
This is the daily life of an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. And I want to tell you about it , honestly, vulnerably, in ways that most lawyers never dare to.
Chapter OneThe Morning Brief: Where Millions and Tears Arrive Together
Every brief that lands on my desk is, at its core, a human being at one of the most defining crossroads of their life. That document, dense with legal language and facts, represents somebody's sleepless nights, somebody's life savings, somebody's most profound grief, or somebody's most desperate hope.
This morning it might be a commercial property transaction ; a Nairobi businessperson transferring land worth KSh 80 million. On paper, it's a conveyancing matter. In reality, it's thirty years of sweat, risk, early mornings, and sacrificed holidays crystallised into a title deed. My client holds that document out to me with shaking hands. "Purity," they say quietly, "this is everything." They are not being dramatic. They mean it literally.
In Kenya, a single title deed can represent a family's entire generational wealth ; property that a grandparent walked barefoot to acquire, that a parent mortgaged their future to keep, that a child now trusts their lawyer to protect. When I review a conveyancing file, I am not reviewing paper. I am reviewing a dynasty.
A property lawyer in Nairobi is not just a conveyancer. We are the last line of defence against fraud, double-allocation, corrupt land officials, and predatory deals buried in fine print that a client signs under pressure. The Land Registration Act, the Land Act, the National Land Commission Act ; these are not abstract statutes. They are shields. And I wield them on your behalf.
Chapter Two"My Father Just Died. And Now My Brothers Are at War."
If there is one area of law that strips human beings down to their most raw and unguarded selves, it is succession and inheritance. Grief and money arriving at the same door, at the same time, is a combustible combination , and as a succession lawyer in Kenya, I stand right in the middle of it.
I have sat across from siblings who grew up in the same house, shared the same childhood meals, wept together at their parent's graveside , and within weeks of the burial, cannot be in the same room without threatening each other. The family home that was once a sanctuary becomes a battlefield. Land that a father tilled for forty years suddenly has three different people claiming it as theirs alone.
The most dangerous document in Kenya is not a criminal charge sheet. It is an undrafted will , or worse, no will at all. Because what follows belongs not just in a courtroom. It belongs in a novel about the darkest corners of human nature.
— Purity K. Mbaabu, AdvocateI have helped families navigate the Grant of Letters of Administration and Probate, untangle intestate estates under the Law of Succession Act, and fight off opportunistic relatives who appear at the eleventh hour with dubious claims. I have protected widows who were being pushed off land their husbands left them. I have represented children whose inheritance was being quietly stolen by adults who should have known better.
Every one of these files comes home with me in some way. Not in the sense that I break confidentiality ; I never do, and I never will. But in the sense that the weight of what people trust me with does not leave the moment I lock my office door.
Chapter ThreeThe Secrets I Will Carry to My Grave
Nothing in legal practice requires more emotional precision than family law. Divorce. Child custody. Maintenance. Domestic violence injunctions. These are not just legal proceedings. They are the formal dissolution of a life someone once dreamed of. I have had clients describe in my office, in hushed, halting sentences , things that their closest friends will never know. Things that would make headlines if they were public.
They tell me because they must. Because their case depends on full disclosure to their advocate. And because, in that moment, I am perhaps the only person in the world they feel safe telling.
Attorney-client privilege is not just a legal technicality. It is a sacred covenant. What you tell your lawyer does not leave that room. Not ever. Not to a spouse. Not to family. Not under social pressure. What you share with me lives with me and it ends with me.
I have sat across from a mother weeping because her children are being used as weapons in a custody battle. I have represented fathers who were good men and good parents, fighting for access to their children against systems that weren't always built with them in mind. I have prepared maintenance applications for women who went from financial partners to economic dependents overnight, and who came to me too ashamed to admit how bad things had gotten.
In every one of those chairs, across from every one of those human beings, I am simultaneously a lawyer, a strategist, a confidante, and a wall that they can lean on while I build their case. The law is cold. I am not. And the best advocacy happens at the intersection of both.
Chapter FourThe Fight: Litigation and the Theatre of the High Court
There is a particular stillness that falls over me the moment I walk through the doors of the High Court of Kenya. The tiled shiny floors. The portraits on the walls. The formality of it. And then , the profound responsibility that settles across your shoulders like a mantle.
In litigation, whether it is a commercial dispute over a multi-million-shilling contract, a land case that has run through three generations, or a criminal matter where someone's freedom hinges on what I say next , the stakes are never abstract. They are flesh and blood. They are years. They are liberty.
In criminal practice, I have represented clients who came to me pale with fear, certain the system would crush them. The preparation, the strategy, the cross-examination that dismantles a prosecution witness , these are not performances. They are precision instruments in the service of justice. And justice, in Kenya as everywhere, does not arrive automatically. It must be demanded, argued, and earned.
People do not understand that a lawyer loses sleep too. We rehearse your cross-examination at 2 a.m. We read the same clause forty times looking for the argument that saves you. We carry your case into our weekends, our dinners, our silences. Because you trusted us. And that is not something we take lightly.
— Purity K. Mbaabu, AdvocateCorporate and commercial litigation adds another dimension entirely ; boardroom disputes, breach of contract claims, injunctions to stop a fraudulent transaction mid-flight. I have filed urgent applications at 4 p.m. on a Friday to prevent assets worth tens of millions from being dissipated before Monday. The law moves slowly. Lawyers, when their clients need them to, must move at speed.
Chapter FiveLawyers Are Human. We Just Rarely Admit It.
Here is what they do not teach you in law school: the emotional labour of carrying other people's crises , every single day, for a career is a weight that accumulates. There is no off-switch. A lawyer who is truly present for their clients cannot simply detach at 5 p.m. and be entirely unburdened by 5:01.
I genuinely believe that many lawyers , perhaps most who do this work with full commitment could benefit from professional therapy. Not as a sign of weakness. As a sign of self-awareness. Because absorbing grief, fury, betrayal, financial ruin, and trauma as a professional listener, day after day, year after year, without processing it, is not sustainable. It is not healthy. And it does not make you a better lawyer. It eventually makes you a hollow one.
The advocates who serve you best are not machines in suits. They are people who feel the weight of your case, who lose sleep on your behalf, who fight for you with every professional tool at their disposal , and then go home to their own families, their own struggles, their own humanity. The greatest lawyers are not those who feel nothing. They are those who feel everything, and still show up at full capacity for you.
I have a life outside these chambers. I have people I love, moments that make me laugh so hard I forget every pending file, ordinary days of quiet joy that have nothing to do with the law. And I guard that life , not because clients don't matter, but because a lawyer who is depleted, isolated, and emotionally exhausted serves no one well.
The balance is never perfect. But the intention , to be absolutely present for my clients and still remain whole as a human being that intention is constant.
Chapter SixWhy Lawyers Matter More Than You Think
In the discourse of a nation, we celebrate doctors who save lives, engineers who build roads, teachers who shape minds. Lawyers, more often than not, are the punchline of a joke. The profession has an image problem that, frankly, we have never done enough to correct.
But consider this: every single system that protects you as a Kenyan citizen was written, argued, and defended by lawyers. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 — the document that guarantees your right to life, to property, to dignity was drafted and debated by lawyers. Every land law that prevents the powerful from simply taking what belongs to you. Every employment protection. Every consumer right. Every criminal procedural safeguard that ensures you cannot be imprisoned without due process. Lawyers
A country without a functioning, independent, and courageous legal profession is a country where the powerful can do whatever they wish to the powerless. The rule of law is not a slogan. It is the infrastructure of civilisation. And advocates , in their chambers, in the courts, in the boardrooms, in the homes of grieving families are the ones maintaining that infrastructure, one brief at a time.
Think about what Kenya would look like without us. Land would change hands based on who had the stronger arm, not the cleaner title. Widows would be dispossessed. Children would lose inheritance to greed. The guilty would walk and the innocent would be swallowed. Contracts would be worthless. Business would be impossible. Without lawyers, Kenya does not function. It is not an exaggeration. It is simply true.
Chapter Seven"I Trust You, Purity."
Of everything I carry as a lawyer , and I carry a great deal , the heaviest and most humbling is this: the absolute trust my clients place in me.
It arrives in different ways. In the elderly man who hands me his title deed and says, without elaborating, "Sort it." In the young woman who whispers details of her marriage that she has told no one else, and then looks at me with eyes that say: please make this right. In the entrepreneur who wire-transfers their litigation deposit and says, "I'm in your hands." In the family that, in the middle of their grief and their conflict, pauses long enough to call me and say: "We need you."
That trust is not a small thing. It is not a transaction. It is a covenant. And not a single day will pass in my practice , not one , where any client will receive anything less than my absolute best. That is not a marketing promise. It is the only version of this profession I know how to practise.
I am Purity Kathambi Mbaabu. I am a lawyer. And this , all of this , is what I carry, every single day, on your behalf.
People come to me at the bottom of their worst moments, trusting me with everything they have , their homes, their children, their freedom, their futures. The responsibility is enormous. It is humbling. And it is the greatest privilege I know.
— Purity Kathambi Mbaabu, Advocate of the High Court of Kenya
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