Felix Otieno Odhiambo is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya with a professional membership in both the Law Societyvof Kenya and the East African Law Society. His work experience cuts across his roles as the Director of Examination at the Council of Legal Education, the organisation that administers Kenya’s Bar Examination and regulates Kenya’s Legal education.
He is a Partner at Japheth Kenvine Felix & Smith in Nairobi.
Lecturer of Law at the Kenyatta University with research interest having previously lectured at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa between 2016 and 2023.
Odhiambo has a PhD in Law from University of Dar es Salaam, a Masters Degree and Bachelor of Law from the University of Nairobi.
Odhiambo answers Courtroom Mail 10 questions
1. Are you worried about AI disrupting the legal profession?
Yes. I must admit that I have deep-seated worries about the extent to which AI would disrupt the legal profession not just in practice but also in the training of lawyers. The effect of AI in training is being felt both at the university level as well as at the postgraduate levels, especially, in regard to the influence of AI in the examination process. AI offers a very fundamental shift in the legal space and it requires that legal professionals harness its positive aspects while sieving out the rest.
2.What areas of law practice do think will boom in the future?
I believe the areas of law that have better prospects of booming in the future would be in the spaces of technology
3.What reality dawned on you when you started practising Law which you never contemplated while studying law?
The practice of law is actually more about business planning and management than anything else. The training of lawyers is presently done in a manner that does not appreciate the multidisciplinary approach of the law so that the law is treated as an end in itself. However, when you get into the field of practice, you realise that legal practice is actually supported and sustained by all these other disciplines like business principles which you had never really been prepared for.
4. What Inspired you to study law?
My childhood background had a great influence in my decision to study law. I cam e from a dysfunctional family with my mother and maternal grandmother having had to bear the brunt of raising us up as my dad was largely missing in action. With that kind of a disadvantaged past, I took a lot of interests in human rights, especially, rights of the vulnerable such as women and children. In my formal legal training, however, I found a lot of interest in land and natural resources law.
5. What can be done to make law more profitable for lawyers?Law should be taught from a multidisciplinary point of view so that lawyers get to appreciate the roles of other disciplines in and around the law. The law is not an end in itself. Besides, lawyers need to harness and engender the use of technology in their practice of the law because the traditional practice of the law is no longer tenable.
6. If you are given an opportunity to change something in the justice system, what will you change?
Enhancement of the human resource capacity within the justice system so as to improve the attitude and turnaround times for better service delivery within the system. Kenya presently has a very high case backlog in the Judiciary and this greatly affects service delivery within the entire justice system. There is need for organisational culture change within a number of the key sector players within the justice system, hence, the need for an ongoing training.
7. If you are given $100,000 to donate to a cause, what cause will you donate to?
I would prioritise an educational cause, especially, legal education training cause.
8. If the option to be a lawyer ceases to exist, what other profession will you choose?
I would go into fulltime lectureship. As a trained teacher, I do have a natural attraction towards the lecture hall and, therefore, I would never struggle with the choice of what else I would need to do.
9. What do you consider the three greatest inventions?
For me as a lawyer, I consider technological advancement as the greatest invention because it is just never exhaustible. It keeps on expanding and offering more and better opportunities.
10. On a scale of 1-10, ten being the most relevant, how will you rate the relevance of your Bar Association/ Law Society in the professional lives of lawyers.
10. I would rate the Law Society of Kenya at 6. I find the Society not being able to offer effective regulation to the legal profession in this era and age, especially, in light of the disruptive nature of technology. The LSK seems to be struggling with the question of how to discharge its mandate in this era but by using the traditional tools of the past century.
