“Sometimes I feel like academics and intellectuals are quite selfish. It doesn’t make sense to use the community to collect data involving them and then, after publishing the research, it just stays on a website or in a publication.” What happens to knowledge after it has been gathered? This is a question that has come to define how Nicole Nereah understands the law. A Strathmore Law School graduate, Nereah entered law school with little confidence in herself. She was reserved and often found herself wondering how some of her classmates could so easily stand up and speak. It was a pattern she decided to change. She decided to bring out the best in her. A decision that would go on to change her entire law school journey,

Finding her voice through the Law Review

Nereah’s first attempt at getting involved outside the classroom was through the Kenya Model United Nations (KMUN), where, apparently, the dust was constant. She was rejected.Did she wait to heal from that? No. Kuoga na kurudi soko,as her peers would put it. When an opportunity to join the Strathmore Law Review (SLR) came up, the rejection was still fresh in her mind. “I was scared, but I applied. I actually didn’t have any writing experience before that”  Regardless, she went for it, applying for a Junior Editor position, and this time, she got it. If you have watched The Blacklist, this is where Raymond Reddington would  say, “Things fail, things end. So that something else can begin.” And for Nereah, this really was the beginning of something. The new experience at SLR introduced her to a world of legal research and writing that she had not previously considered.

“The best thing that SLS did for us was introduce us to Cecil Abungu,” she says, reflecting on how SLR also connected her with people who would play an important role in her development. Cecil, a Strathmore Law School alumnus and outgoing doctoral fellow renowned for his research expertise, became an important influence on Nereah’s research journey.  Nereah recalls that the older students in SLR initially intimidated her. But through interactions with mentors such as Tabitha Munyaka and Mwendwa, she began to realise that confidence was not necessarily a personality trait. It was a skill she could develop.“If you don’t speak up, you might be overlooked. And if you want to be a good lawyer, you cannot be overlooked.”

Research that should leave the library

Why do we continue to rely so heavily on legal principles developed in contexts that are very different from our own? Nereah found it difficult to understand why Kenyan legal practice could sometimes lean so heavily on English law when the country’s social, economic and environmental realities are so different. Her dissertation examined the environmental impact of artificial intelligence technology, a subject she believes illustrates the need to develop legal frameworks that respond to Kenya’s own circumstances.

With AI increasingly being adopted across Africa, Nicole argues that legal systems must understand the realities on the ground before developing appropriate responses. “For us to upgrade our laws, it’s very important to do situational analysis and shift them to the Kenyan context.” This desire to connect research with local realities became even stronger through her work with the Strathmore Law Clinic. Through the Strathmore Law Clinic’s Human Rights Unit, she was involved in the Uiridhi Project, which focuses on succession law, an area that affects many families but is often poorly understood.

“What made me feel good was that you could see the impact in real time. It made it worth it for me.” It was through the Legal Aid Caravan, however, that she began to see more clearly the gap between research and the communities it is meant to serve. She encountered communities that had been the subject of research before but still lacked basic knowledge about their rights. “We see so many papers and publications about issues like gender-based violence, but the people who are affected by these issues don’t even know their roots, despite having been used for research purposes and data collection,” she says. “You can theorise your way through research, but you always have to come back. That is a way to promote access to justice.”

Discovering another world of law

Exchange programmes are a significant part of the Strathmore Law School experience, and Nereah was among the students who got to experience this. After completing her fourth-year examinations, she travelled to Budapest, Hungary, for an exchange programme at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. One of the courses that particularly challenged her during the exchange was on statelessness. “I always thought that if you were born in a certain place, automatically you are a citizen. Then I found out that is not the case. It’s a lot more complex than where you were born.”

The experience opened her eyes to legal concepts she had never encountered in the Kenyan jurisdiction. She found herself in classrooms where students and lecturers had knowledge of areas of law that were unfamiliar to her, just as she sometimes knew things they did not, largely because of the differences between their jurisdictions. “There is a whole other world of law,” she says.

As she graduates, Nicole wants to use legal research to contribute to policy-making and implementation in Kenya, while ensuring that research remains connected to the communities it is meant to serve. “Graduating to me means that I have managed to accomplish what I put my mind to. I came in and said I will graduate from law school, and I would have left my mark. And I think I have.”

Congratulations Nicole Nereah!

Article by Evans Ijakaa