Junior Lawyers Against Poverty (JLAP)

Junior Lawyers Against Poverty is a network of students and junior lawyers using their legal skills to help fight one of the world’s toughest challenges – eradication of poverty – through global improvement of access to justice and legal education.

“We fight poverty through our work on legal support projects, public interest litigation, twinning law students and law departments at universities, training law students and junior lawyers and fundraising for our Justice Fund (amongst other projects,” noted Silas Owiti, the UoN Coordinator.

JLAP was founded in 2015 to include university students, legal apprentices and trainee lawyers in Lawyers Against Poverty projects. JLAP Groups now operate at universities across the UK and in Africa, with hundreds of students participating in JLAP projects since its inception.

Owiti highlighted, “We are a wide network of law students and junior lawyers, from Manchester, Eritrea, London, Gambia, Exeter, Nairobi, Kampala and many more…This led to the launch of JLAP - University of Nairobi Law Chapter in March, 2021 under the patronage of Prof. Kiarie Mwaura.”

JLAP recently held a meeting that was attended by Ms Naomi Sanders, who is the coordinator responsible for relations between the various JLAP branches and is also legal counsel at Bboxx, a company invested in eradicating energy poverty. She is also involved in other companies such as Focus on Green Finance, Social Finance and Impact Investing, is a UK Board Member of Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers, Mentor for Ocean Hub Africa and is a member of Women in Social Finance.

She was accompanied by two colleagues from Bboxx, Jaymini Philp and David

Fruitful discussions were held on Friday September 2, 2022 on the future of JLAP-UoN chapter, Internship and mentorship opportunities for law students, achievements and challenges encountered within the UoN chapter and other JLAP communities.