What do you want to be when you grow up? Most of us remember this childhood question. For many, the answer came quickly, confidently, and sometimes loudly. Doctor. Pilot. Teacher. Engineer. Lawyer. Often, these answers were shaped by the people we admired, the professions we saw on television, or the adults around us who seemed to carry a certain kind of purpose and quiet (and at times loud) authority.

For Sarah Kemuma Manyura, the answer was influenced by something much closer to home.

She grew up in a family where the law was not a distant profession or an abstract idea. It was something she saw, heard, and modelled by the people closest to her. With judges in the family, the world of justice, courts, reasoning, fairness, and public service was part of the environment that shaped her early imagination. It was almost natural, then, that the dream of becoming a lawyer began to take root.

What may have started as childhood admiration slowly grew into a personal calling. After high school, Sarah took her first formal step into the legal profession by pursuing her Bachelor of Laws degree at the Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA). It was a journey that introduced her to the foundations of law, sharpened her thinking, and opened her eyes to the many ways in which law touches people’s lives. With time, the girl who once admired the legal profession from a distance began to understand its weight, its discipline, and its power to shape society.

But Sarah’s story did not move in a straight line from one classroom to the next.

After completing her undergraduate studies, she spent nearly a decade building her career brick by brick. She gained experience in the legal field, pursued additional certifications, and continued sharpening her knowledge so that she could remain grounded, relevant, and prepared for the demands of practice. Along the way, life also expanded. Family and motherhood became part of her journey, responsibilities she carried with grace while continuing to grow professionally.

Ten years later, Sarah returned to the classroom. This time, she came to Strathmore University Law School to pursue a Master of Laws (LL.M). In an interesting full-circle moment, Strathmore was not entirely unfamiliar to her family story. Her father is a Strathmore alumnus, making her own journey feel, in some ways, like a continuation of footsteps already laid before her. The apple, as they say, does not fall far from the tree.

She knew the journey would be intense. She knew it would demand time, discipline, sacrifice, and mental stamina. But she also knew it was the right next step in her career. Choosing the General LL.M gave her a broad and enriching experience across different areas of law. It allowed her to engage with diverse legal questions, deepen her understanding of the legal system, and connect her years of practical experience with advanced academic reflection.

The journey, she says, was a rewarding one,  and much of that she credits to her supervisor, Dr. Claire Adionyi, who guided and walked alongside her throughout, even when it was demanding, lovely and uncertain, she was there offering steady direction. But it was her classmates who made the experience what it was. Olive, Dan, and Cynthia, her fellow general LL.M classmates,  became, in her words, exactly the kind of people she’d hoped for: all of them juggling full lives outside the program, all working, all stretched in different directions, and yet studying together so closely that the cohort felt less like a class and more like a support system. They traded feedback, re-explained concepts to each other when something didn’t land the first time, and simply showed up for one another, week after week. And keeping the whole group sharp was an unexpected trio of Vallary, Luous, and Irene, three Doctor of Laws (LL.D) students whose presence in the group kept everyone just a little more on their toes, raising the bar simply by being in the room.

Beyond the classroom, Sarah also speaks with gratitude about the support of her employer and boss, who made room for her to pursue her studies while continuing to grow in her legal career. Balancing work, family, motherhood, and an LL.M was not easy. At the time, she was also working in a different county, away from home, which meant that the demands on her were even greater. It required discipline, sacrifice, planning, and emotional strength.

Yet, she kept going. She learnt to balance the law, family, work, motherhood, and study, not perfectly, but faithfully. And now, at the tail end of the journey, that persistence has brought her to a meaningful finish. Somewhere within that demanding season, Sarah’s thoughts kept returning to a question at the heart of justice in Kenya: what happens when ordinary people cannot access the courts meant to serve them? That question eventually shaped her thesis and drew her attention to the Small Claims Courts.

The Weight of Small Claims

Sarah Kemuma Manyura’s LL.M thesis, An Assessment of the Small Claims Courts Legal Framework in Enhancing Access to Justice in Kenya, examines whether Kenya’s Small Claims Courts (SCCs), established under the Small Claims Courts Act, 2016, are fulfilling their promise of providing ordinary citizens with a fast, affordable means of resolving civil and commercial disputes valued at up to Sh1 million.

Using doctrinal legal research and access-to-justice as her guiding framework, she analyses the SCC framework through three lenses: substantive (what disputes the courts can actually hear), procedural (how quickly and fairly cases move through the system), and administrative (whether the courts are resourced and accessible enough to serve the public).

The problem she’s solving? Kenya’s mainstream courts are slow and expensive enough that many citizens simply can’t afford to seek justice through them, a gap the Small Claims Courts were designed to close, and one that’s clearly in demand. Nearly a quarter of all cases filed in Kenya’s courts in 2025 went through the SCCs. But Manyura’s research shows the courts are running into problems nobody fully anticipated when they were designed. There’s confusion over exactly which cases the courts have jurisdiction to hear; the law’s 60-day timeline for resolving disputes is being interpreted inconsistently by appellate courts, undermining the “quick justice” the system promises; and many SCCs are under-resourced and geographically out of reach for the people who need them most. Her thesis pulls these three problems together and proposes reforms — informed by what’s working in Zambia, Nigeria, and Canada — to fix them.

That’s why her research matters. Access to justice is a constitutional right in Kenya, guaranteed under Article 48, but a right on paper means little if the institution meant to deliver it is hobbled by unclear rules, missed deadlines, and thin resources. Manyura’s research matters because it provides a precise diagnosis of what is going wrong within a court system that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Kenyans already rely on. It also comes at a pivotal moment, as the Judiciary works to reform the Small Claims Courts framework, with findings that speak directly to litigants awaiting their cases, advocates pushing for timely resolutions, and a court system striving to fulfil a promise it made nearly a decade ago.

And that is what makes Sarah’s story unique.

Somewhere in the middle of the demands of work, motherhood, study, research, and distance from home, she found herself returning to the very reason she had chosen law in the first place: impact. Behind every case file is a person. A small trader waiting for payment. A family seeking resolution. A citizen hoping the system will hear them without forcing them to spend years and resources they may not have. In studying the Small Claims Courts, Sarah was not only looking at a legal framework; she was looking at the distance between a constitutional promise and the lived reality of ordinary Kenyans.

In many ways, her LL.M journey brought her full circle. The Bachelor of Laws had been completed. Years of legal practice had shaped her. Certifications, professional experience, motherhood, work, and life had all added layer upon layer to the person she was becoming. Then came the LL.M at Strathmore, not as a pause from life, but as another demanding chapter added onto an already full life.

And still, she showed up. She read. She researched. She worked. She mothered. She travelled. She balanced. She stretched, further than she knew she could. And now, standing at the end of this chapter, Sarah can look back with gratitude at how far she has come,  and with quiet excitement at how much further she still wants to go. For her, the journey does not end with the LL.M.

Her eyes are already set on the next goal: pursuing an LL.D and eventually a place in academia, a path that would allow her to teach, research, mentor, and continue contributing to conversations around justice, law, and society.

The young girl who once admired the legal minds around her is now becoming a woman whose own journey may one day inspire the next generation of legal minds. Maybe, years from now, another young girl will watch an interview, read a university spotlight like this one, or simply hear Sarah’s story in corridors of justice and say, “I want to be a lawyer too. I want to be like her.”

For Sarah, that, more than any single case won, more than any degree earned, would be impact in its truest form. Not just success for herself, but a life and a career that quietly clears a path for someone else to see what’s possible.

Article written by: Jemmy M. Kamau