The Law Society of Kenya: What a waste.

You know an institution is bereft of ideas, crippled by mediocrity, sclerotic with mendacity and completely out of touch with reality when the one change it tom-toms to the whole wide world is a change in titles. The Law Society has hit a nadir; by obsessively picking over the change from "Chairman of the Council" to "President of the Council," I am left with little doubt that the Law Society will not be welcoming the future with open arm, but will have its eyes firmly shut as it buries its head in the sand, in denial about the world in which it is supposed to operate in.

We have spoken of reform. We have listened to speeches about reform. We have read and reread numerous paper on reforms. Yet the Law Society remains in crisis. The best example of the decrepitude of the Law Society, especially of its leadership's decrepit thinking, is the fiasco over the International Arbitration Centre, the IAC, a boondoggle of doubtful value and the reason for the schism between the Young Turks and the Ancien Regime. The Law Society, like the medical doctors' Board and the engineer's Board, plays three key roles: it maintains the professional standards of its members; it advises the people on legal, especially constitutional, matters; and it looks out for the welfare of its members. The Council of the Law Society has failed to persuade members that the IAC contributes to any of its goals.

The Secretary to the Council, who is the Chief Executive Officer, once published a screed of breathtaking tone-deafness on the, to him anyway, vital importance of a dress code for advocates of the High Court. How the Council of the Law Society permitted this astounding document to be published further demonstrates the paucity of ideas abroad in the Society. Rather than evoke the spirit of the Constitution, including the political tae kwon-do that saw it being promulgated, that proclaims "justice shall be administered without undue regard to procedural technicalities" at Article 159(2)(d), the Law Society, through its Secretary/CEO, set down in writing whether or not women counsel would be permitted to wear shoes that revealed their toes. How long did it take these seniors to come up with that rule? Had they or their fellow seniors on the Bench been scandalised by some toes, bring ill-repute upon the other members? I do not know; but surely, when grown men and women choose to focus on pediatric acceptability rather than on the crisis in professional training, you know that they are not just scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ideas, but that they have given up thinking as a responsibility to far.

None of the candidates who have offered themselves for office come the February elections inspires much confidence. Insiders with insiders' knowledge of the Council's affairs, they are best treated as more of the same. It is almost certain that they too will fight the general membership tooth and nail to see the IAC imbroglio decided in the Council's favour. You can abet your last shilling that the new Council will zealously "protect the traditions of the Law Society" like making damn sure women counsel do not wear peep-toed shoes and that if a man has the temerity to wear a bright pink tie to court, he should be flogged in the town square.

We have serious problems in the profession. Among them, of course, is the crisis in professional training at both the university and the Kenya School of Law. The Council of Legal Education will not help; like many government agencies, it is only interested in one thing: power and expansion of its mandate. The School itself has been starved of leadership for so long that it will follow the Pied Piper to its utter ruin, a path it is on currently. The head of the legal profession in Kenya, the Attorney-General, remains hostage to politics, politics, politics and so he is of no use.

Kenya proclaims that it is a capitalist market, where merit and competition are the keys to success and wealth. That proclamation is disbelieved by the Council of Legal Education and the Council of the Law Society, and it is why the Law School remains a one-building affair in Nairobi and the professional qualifications and professionalism of both universities and Law Societies seems not to have troubled the members of the two councils. It is the IAC, and the rent-seeking it seems to have engendered, that animates candidates for the moronically grandiose office of President of the Law Society. How low the mighty have fallen.