Is Kenya over producing law graduates? How Kenya compares with other countries

Lawyers admitted to the bar./AI ILLUSTRATION

Is Kenya producing more lawyers than it can absorb? This is the debate the country is currently grappling with, as 20 public and private universities have been accredited to offer the law degree.

A section of Kenyans and even advocates have resorted to social media to question the number of advocates being admitted regularly to the bar.

Last week, Chief Justice Martha Koome revealed that she had been under pressure to reduce the number of advocates admitted to the bar.

But the CJ, defied the push by those fearing social media backlash to admit 920 new advocates to join the noble profession.  

"Some people were saying that we can escape from the attacks on social media if we can admit half of you, 450. I showed them the door,” she said adding her response was emphatic: “Shaitani ashindwe!”

By law, one must be a member of the Law Society of Kenya in order to practice as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya; hence, the rituals of admission to the bar.

In the past few years, there have been debates on the number of lawyers and advocates that our universities are churning out compared to the market needs.

Former LSK President Nelson Havi has been one of the most vocal voices, criticizing the proliferation of universities and campuses offering law degrees.

The Council of Legal Education (CLE), being the regulator of the sector, may have heeded some of the critics of the legal education system and has convened a conference to discuss the future of the sector.

CLE explains that the Legal Education in Kenya and East Africa has evolved considerably from its colonial origins to the current dynamic and diverse scene.

“Initially, legal training in East Africa was only available at the University College of Dar-es Salaam-the then part of East African University. Today, all countries in east Africa host numerous universities offering legal courses, with Kenya alone having around 20 such institutions,” CLE CEO Prof Jack Mwimali says.

Judicial Service Commission (JSC) member representing lawyers Ombati Omwanza scoffs at persons questioning the number of trained lawyers.

“I don’t think they are justified,” Omwanza says of the critics, adding that “the market normally sorts out the people. You must be competent and professional and have a cutting edge to make it in the competitive field.”

But how is Kenya compared to other countries in the region, continent, and globally? Kenya has had about 26,000 lawyers admitted to the bar since independence in a population of 52 million. Of this, about 17,000 are in active practice, with some having died or stopped practicing.

In neighbouring Uganda, their law council has not provided data on the number of advocates within the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs of Uganda, showing 1271 law firms are registered in the country by 2024.

Tanzania has about 10,436 lawyers, while South Africa has 33,929 practicing attorneys, and Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 lawyers, with the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) reporting over 140,000 lawyers on its roll.

In India, the world’s most populous nation, there are over 2 million lawyers, with the Ministry of Law & Justice reporting 2,013,081 registered advocates across the country as of 2025.

There are over 160,000 practising solicitors and approximately 17,000 practising barristers in the UK, which brings the total number of lawyers to roughly 177,000.

The total number of solicitors in both England and Wales on the roll at the end of October 2025 was 212,481, according to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Outside the common law jurisdictions, there were approximately 1.33 million active lawyers in the U.S. as of early 2024, according to the American Bar Association (ABA).

There are no specific data on the number of lawyers in the whole world, but the estimations place them at about 20 million.