Artificial Intelligence in Kenyan Litigation: Assistance or Threat?
Nothing has received as much attention in the last decade as AI. It has featured in almost all discussions. From education, medicine, finance, to law, you name it. It will be the defining technology of this epoch and stage of human civilisation in future history classes. It is today what the steam engine was in the 18th Century, in defining the industrial revolution. The steam engine replaced the limited traditional energy sources of horses, oxen, the water mill and human muscle power. It brought efficiency. There’s been an increase in scientific knowledge, and we have had many developments since. New technologies are emerging every day. One thing that remains clear is that all these developments have always sought to achieve efficiency.
At this point, we have AI, which essentially means machine learning using artificial neural networks. This technology was originally inspired by the structure of the brain. It is attributed to Geoffrey Hinton, who is dubbed the ‘Godfather of AI’. In 1983–1985, he used tools from statistical physics to create the Boltzmann machine, which could learn to recognize characteristic elements in a set of data. The invention became significant, for example, in the classification and creation of images.[1] This newfound development spurred numerous individuals to contribute to its advancement. These advancements have led to the development of the AI tools we have today, such as ChatGPT, Canva, and Gemini.
In 2024, Geoffrey Hinton won a Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks. One of Hinton’s first reactions on winning the prize was to sound a word of caution about AI: “I think it’s very important right now for people to be working on the issue of how we will keep control?” Hinton said. “We need to put a lot of research effort into it. I think one thing governments can do is force the big companies to spend a lot more of their resources on safety research.”[2]
On that note, we are equally reminded of Albert Einstein's views in his article ‘Why Socialism?’ Written in May 1949, he forewarned that technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than an easing of the burden of work for all.
Based on the above, we are impelled to ask, what is the place of A.I. in the Kenyan legal system?
On the Edge of the Pandemic: Embracing the New.
The COVID-19 pandemic was arguably the final great force that demonstrated and demanded that adopting technology to administer justice was a necessity. The Kenyan Judiciary has since adopted and implemented technology to improve its service delivery and inspire confidence in the public. It has been characterized by the move away from paper-based procedures and physical courts. The potential of technology has arguably not been fully tapped; this is only a scratch on the surface.
As per ‘The State of the Judiciary and the Administration of Justice: Annual Report 2024/2025’, the judiciary has prioritized the ongoing automation and digitization to improve accessibility, strengthen accountability and safeguard the integrity of information.[3] As part of its strategic plan, the Judiciary is keen on the potential adoption of artificial intelligence tools for case management, smart scheduling, and analytics to inform evidence-based judicial reforms.[4] The Judiciary asserts that through these digitization initiatives, it is laying the groundwork for a justice system that is not only independent and accessible but also adaptive to the evolving needs of society in a digital era.[5]
The state of the economy and Artificial Intelligence.
Adopting technology is a financial component in a country's economy. Using technology allows people to interact with goods and services in a manner that creates wealth for society.[6]
In the course of rendering justice, there’s always the parallel element of creating wealth through various means, such as employment, collecting revenue through fines and administrative charges. The concept of human beings as rational maximisers of their self-interest implies that people respond to incentives; that if people’s surroundings change in such a way that they could increase their satisfaction by altering their behaviour, they will do so. From this proposition, it can be said that providers of legal services, be it private practitioners or the judiciary, stand to utilize their resources through the adoption of technology. Economics is about the efficient use of resources, whether it be infrastructure, manpower, talent, or even time. Money is merely a claim on resources.
People respond to incentives. If technology makes legal work quicker, cheaper, or more accurate, lawyers, judges, and institutions will adopt it. That is basic economic behaviour. Properly integrated AI systems can reduce waste, improve allocation, and enhance productivity within the legal system.
Litigators who integrate AI into their practice will have an easier time doing business. It will be crucial to their economic growth. They will be competitive in a business environment that emphasises efficiency and results.
Need for speed in research.
Clients continue to demand efficiency and responsiveness from their lawyers at a lower cost. Clients expect their lawyers to focus more on the outcome and less on the time spent on a legal matter. [7]AI-assisted research will enable legal researchers to get quick access to links to relevant primary and secondary authorities. They spare the researcher the task of digging through unfiltered links. A properly trained system would be able to identify what the researcher is looking for with human-like precision. This leaves litigants with more time to craft the best strategies for their clients. The authorities and materials would already have been found with ease.
A.I. capabilities to assist in delegating tasks.
We now have A.I. assistants like Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel, which are designed to help legal professionals move beyond simple prompts into true task delegation. Rather than acting only as a responsive assistant, this next-generation system uses agentic AI and deep research to plan, reason, and execute multi-step legal workflows across research, drafting, and document review.[8] It can reason through a sequence of actions and produce substantive deliverables. Lawyers will then be able to delegate structured tasks while staying in control of quality and oversight.[9]
Chatbots improve communication.
Chatbots will help lawyers manage routine inquiries and guide their clients through simple inquiries, such as court dates or fees for standardized tasks or services. This will free lawyers to focus on complex, human-centred work. When used responsibly, chatbots will improve access to information without compromising professional standards.
Challenges of AI in litigation.
There's a lack of training to enable the best use of AI in legal work. At the present moment, most lawyers use it based on intuition and what has been marketed to them by AI-developing companies. The lack of regulated training on the use of AI is a recipe for confusion and ethical pitfalls.
There will be a need for goodwill and continued support from the state to allocate the Judiciary sufficient capital to procure the best state-of-the-art software and AI systems.
Limitations of AI.
A technical factor that may hinder the adoption of legal technology is the uniqueness of the technology, particularly AI-based systems. The law is messy and is ever-changing, which makes it challenging to construct algorithms that capture the law in a valuable way.[10] Unlike in other professions such as medicine and business, responses to legal questions can vary significantly depending on the relevant jurisdiction.[11] For instance, most legal questions do not require a “yes or no answer” but rather a detailed explanation.[12] The complexity of the law itself may make some legal tech so complicated. Researchers argue that legal reasoning may be complex, thereby harming the adoption of effective legal tech. To some legal experts, legal reasoning is inherently a parallel process in which the answer to one legal question may change the next question asked. Thus, this complexity in legal arguments may significantly disrupt the ability of legal tech to deliver a useful response to legal questions.[13]
The significant fact regarding the procedures of justice is that they are of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings. Any attempt to unduly eliminate the human element, or to esteem a system apart from its adaptation to human psychology as it serves the ends of justice, is likely to result in machine-made justice and a mechanical administration resulting in chaos. The many-sidedness of the problems in law intertwined with religion, ethics, economics and sociology only demands a human judge who experiences and appreciates the human condition to render judgments that befit fellow human beings. AI offers efficiency just like any other piece of technology. It should therefore not substitute the decision-making capabilities of both the lawyer and the judge. Decision-making in law demands an appreciation of the peculiarities of every human being involved in a matter.
Opportunities and Careers in AI and Litigation
This shift of embracing AI in litigation is creating new professional opportunities, many of which sit at the intersection of law, technology, and strategy. How cases are prepared, managed, and argued will no longer be the same. Some of the possible careers that will be in demand with the surge of AI in litigation include the following.
a. Developers of AI Legal Tools.
There is a growing demand for professionals involved in building AI-driven tools that support litigation, including: Case management systems like tracking pleadings, deadlines, evidence, and strategy; financial and cost-management tools like litigation budgeting, fee analysis, and cost recovery; and document review and legal research platforms.
These roles may involve lawyers working alongside software developers, data scientists, and product designers to ensure tools reflect real litigation workflows and legal standards.
b. AI Trainers and Legal Workflow Specialists.
As AI tools enter law firms, courts, and legal departments, there will be a need for professionals who can: Train lawyers and staff on effective and ethical use of AI; design AI-assisted legal workflows; and bridge the gap between legal reasoning and technical systems.
This role will not require coding expertise alone; it requires a deep understanding of legal practice, professional ethics, jurisprudence and judgment.
c. Litigation Strategy and AI Oversight Roles.
AI will assist with research and pattern recognition, but lawyers will remain responsible for: Strategic decisions, advocacy and accountability.
This creates space for specialists focused on AI oversight, quality control, and risk management in litigation.
The path legal work will take.
At present, A.I. occupies no formal, recognized role in Kenya’s legal architecture. It is neither a subject of comprehensive legislation nor an acknowledged institutional actor within the administration of justice. Its presence is practical rather than juridical. It's felt in use, but not yet anchored in law.
First, AI will function as an auxiliary tool, not a decision-maker. Lawyers will use it for legal research, drafting, case summarization, and document review. Courts will indirectly benefit from AI-assisted case management systems, transcription tools, or cause-list automation. But adjudication will remain exclusively human, as demanded by the Constitution and the judicial oath.
Second, the constitutional framework sets clear limits. Articles 10, 47, 50, and 159 of the Constitution require transparency, accountability, due process, and reasoned decision-making. Any deployment of AI in judicial or quasi-judicial processes must therefore be explainable, contestable, non-discriminatory, and subordinate to human oversight.
Third, AI raises institutional and ethical questions that the law has not yet answered. These include: responsibility for AI-assisted errors in judgments and bias embedded in training data. The equality of arms, where one party has access to advanced AI tools and another does not, equally raises ethical issues.
In the absence of regulation, these risks are managed informally, inconsistently, and sometimes invisibly.
Kenya now stands at a choice point. A.I. can either: deepen access to justice by reducing delay, cost, and complexity; or entrench inequality and opacity if adopted without principled guardrails. The State of the Judiciary reports repeatedly emphasise efficiency, digitization, and backlog reduction. AI aligns with those objectives but only as an aid to human judgment, never as its replacement.
Finally, speculations like AI replacing lawyers are unlikely to materialize.
[1] Geoffrey Hinton – Facts – 2024. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2026. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2024/hinton/facts/#content accessed on January 6, 2026.
[2] Nobel Prize Winner, ‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton Has UC San Diego Roots, https://today.ucsd.edu/story/nobel-prize-winner-godfather-of-ai-geoffrey-hinton-has-uc-san-diego-roots accessed on January 6, 2026.
[3] Judiciary of Kenya, The State of the Judiciary and the Administration of Justice: Annual Report 2024/2025 (Judiciary of Kenya 2025).
[4] ibid
[5] ibid
[6] D. Hooks, Z. Davis, V. Agrawal, Z. Li, Exploring factors influencing technology adoption rate at the macro level: A predictive model, Technology in Society, Volume 68, 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X21003018
[7] Apollo Mboya, ‘The Bar: Challenges and Opportunities’ in Yash Pal Ghai and Jill Cottrell Ghai (eds), The Legal Profession and the New Constitutional Order in Kenya (Strathmore University Press 2014) page 241.
[8] Thomson Reuters, Thomson Reuters Launches CoCounsel Legal: Transforming Legal Work with Agentic AI and Deep Research (Press Release, August 2025) https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/press-releases/2025/august/thomson-reuters-launches-cocounsel-legal-transforming-legal-work-with-agentic-ai-and-deep-research accessed on 9th January 2026.
[9] ibid
[10] Mitchelle C. A. Omuom, Factors Affecting Innovation and Adoption of Legal Technology by Legal Professionals in Nairobi, Kenya (MBA thesis, United States International University–Africa 2022) http://erepo.usiu.ac.ke/11732/7568 accessed January 10, 2026.
[11] ibid
[12] ibid
[13] ibid
