The School of Law at Egerton University aims at training students to be legal experts and key players in the promotion of academic achievement and excellence in practice to meet the local and international challenges. As a head-start, it has collaborated with Minnesota School of Law (USA) in various aspects for benchmarking.
Society is dynamic and new issues emerge that require urgent response. There is therefore high demand for specialized and internationally responsive Legal Education.
Following a needs assessment exercise that involved the input of various stakeholders the following key areas were identified: inadequacy in research training; lack of training in legislative drafting, law reform, and election law. They further pointed out the insensitivity of the law to the issue of planning in regard to environmental issues i.e. waste management, pollution, poor land use planning, environmental degradation caused by an increase in population among others.
Emerging issues such as influx and status of refugees, piracy, corruption, money laundering, privacy and freedom of information, hacking of e-mails and cable communications, renewable energy, genetic engineering, and integration of East African community were raised by the stakeholders. They also expressed the need for the training of judicial officers on various emerging trends in law, training of paralegals and law executors on various aspects of the law. This is energized further by the fact that there is a national effort to implement programs that address the Management for Renewal Growth (EMRG) (1986), The Economic Recovery Strategy for Employment and Wealth Creation (ERSWEC) (2003-2007), which underscore the application of Law as key to improved and sustainable Socio–Economic development and attainment of Vision 2030.
In this regard Egerton University has developed a law program that responds to these issues. In the proposed program there are innovative courses, whose description is provided in the course content section. The highlight of this innovation has focused on practical issues such as; constitution-making, legislative drafting, law reform and social justice, corruption and economic crimes, refugees and immigration, media and information, logical and critical thinking, and environmental law. It is also noted that the current number of lawyers, who serve mainly in urban areas, serve a small percentage of the Kenyan population. This underscores the need to establish law programs in more institutions to meet the demand for the production of lawyers who can serve the rural population. To meet this demand, other courses in the program have been reviewed to capture the stakeholders' views on emerging trends which have not been sufficiently addressed by the current practice and practitioners. This is in line with the Sessional Paper no. 1 of 1986 on Economic Management for Renewed Growth.
The Constitution has also created many Constitutional offices and a devolved government, which will require lawyers and therefore there is need to train more lawyers.
The curriculum is tailored to enhance the research skills which are critical in all areas of legal practice and demands that students critically analyze emerging regional and international issues through the production of quality term papers. It has been designed to produce an allround lawyer through the emphasis of integration of personal and legal skills, and development to fit in any branch of legal practice.
The Egerton University School of Law will continuously offer high quality and affordable legal training which will ultimately save the country the much needed foreign exchange given the fact that many students have been undertaking university education outside the country.