​Redefining Legal Excellence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

​An Official 2026 LSK Annual Conference : Pre-Conference Webinar

​BACKGROUND

​The Law Society of Kenya has themed its 2026 Annual Conference "Business Unusual: Legal Practice in the Era of Artificial Intelligence." It is a declaration that the profession has moved past the question of whether AI matters and is now confronting what to do about it :  how to adopt it responsibly, how to maintain professional standards within it, and how to ensure that the tools reshaping legal practice globally are actually fit for the Kenyan,  East African and African legal context.

​On Wednesday, 5th August 2026, five days before the 2026 LSK Annual Conference opens at Diamonds Leisure Beach and Golf Resort in Diani, the Law Society of Kenya and Hakii.AI ; in partnership with Qhala and Law Africa will co-host the official pre-conference webinar: Redefining Legal Excellence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

​This webinar is the opening act of the Business Unusual conversation. It is designed to prime the profession — intellectually, practically, and professionally  for what the Annual Conference will cover at scale. Advocates who attend the webinar on 5th August will arrive in Diani not as passive observers of a conversation about AI and legal practice, but as practitioners who have already engaged with the conference theme.

​THE PROBLEM THIS SESSION ADDRESSES

​Legal research is the foundation of everything an advocate does. Every argument made, every brief filed, every contract drafted, every case won or lost begins with research. In East Africa, that foundation is under unprecedented pressure from two directions simultaneously.

​On one side: Kenyan advocates are currently deploying global generative AI platforms specifically ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Harvey AI in the absence of domestically developed alternatives trained on local law. The underlying training datasets for these tools are drawn predominantly from United States federal case law and United Kingdom common law. These datasets exclude the decisions of the Court of Appeal of Kenya, the constitutional jurisprudence of the High Court of Kenya, the binding authorities of Ugandan and Tanzanian courts, and the official gazettes of East African Community member states. As a result, the output may generate citations and legal reasoning grounded entirely in foreign legal frameworks without application to the Kenyan jurisdiction. An advocate who relies on such output without conducting independent verification of the cited authorities and their applicability to Kenyan law bears a professional risk of negligence or breach of the duty of competence, which may give rise to liability.

​On the other side: manual legal research in East Africa remains broken. Physical law reporters are expensive and incomplete. International legal databases are priced for Magic Circle firms in London, not a three-partner practice in Nairobi. The result is that most East African legal research still happens the way it did thirty years ago : junior associates spending days on tasks that technology should deliver in minutes.

​The profession is being asked to navigate a transformation it was never equipped for, with tools that were never built for it. This webinar addresses that gap directly.

​SESSION OBJECTIVES

​The pre-conference session has three objectives:

​1. Establish the new standard of legal excellence. The session opens by naming what excellent legal practice actually requires in 2026,  not as an aspiration but as a professional obligation. Speakers with authority to define that standard, including voices from the bench and the senior bar, will ground the conversation in the realities of Kenyan legal practice.

​2. Demonstrate what AI-augmented legal research looks like in practice. Through a live, unscripted research demonstration using Hakii.AI Africa's first AI legal research platform trained on over 100 years of East African case law, attendees will see in real time what the new standard of legal research output looks like: comprehensive, cited, jurisdictionally accurate, and produced in minutes rather than days.

​3. Prepare advocates for the Annual Conference conversation. Every element of the session is designed to connect the conversation started on 5th August to the one that continues in Diani. Attendees will leave the webinar with a clear view of what Business Unusual means for their practice, a tool to explore before the conference, and a registered place at the Annual Conference.

​TARGET AUDIENCE

​This session is designed for Kenya's practicing advocates across all levels of seniority and practice area. It is specifically relevant to:

• ​Managing partners and senior associates at law firms seeking to understand how AI tools fit into professional practice standards

• ​Litigation advocates who rely heavily on legal research and precedent identification

• ​Young advocates and junior associates building their research capabilities

• ​In-house legal counsel tracking how the profession's standards are evolving

• ​Legal academics and researchers engaged with the intersection of AI and legal practice

• ​Law students preparing to enter a profession being reshaped by technology

​ORGANISING PARTNERS

​THE LAW SOCIETY OF KENYA (LSK) : The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) is a professional statutory body established under the Law Society of Kenya Act, 2014 with a membership of all advocates in Kenya, currently numbering over 27,000, LSK is the largest and most influential legal professional organisation in East Africa. Its mandate covers the regulation of legal practice, the professional development of advocates, the promotion of access to justice, and the advancement of the rule of law in Kenya.

​LSK administers the Continuing Professional Development programme for Kenya's advocates, sets the professional and ethical standards of the profession, and convenes the Annual Conference — the most significant gathering of Kenya's legal community each year. Under the leadership of President Charles Kanjama SC and the Council elected in 2026, LSK has made AI and legal technology a central priority of its professional development agenda, reflected in the 2026 Annual Conference theme: "Business Unusual: Legal Practice in the Era of Artificial Intelligence."

​LAW AFRICA : Law Africa is East Africa's most comprehensive legal publishing and database organisation, with over a century of legal material spanning legislation, case law, and legal commentary across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the broader East African Community. Founded on the principle that access to the law is a prerequisite for justice, Law Africa has spent decades building the most complete repository of East African legal knowledge in existence.

​Law Africa is the foundational data partner of Hakii.AI. The platform's training corpus — the body of legal material on which its AI has been trained — is drawn directly from Law Africa's archive, making Hakii.AI the only legal AI platform that can genuinely claim to know East African law with the depth and accuracy that practitioners require. The partnership between Law Africa and Qhala/Hakii.AI represents the first time that this century of legal knowledge has been made accessible through artificial intelligence — transforming what was once a passive archive into an active research intelligence that any advocate can use.

​HAKII.AI: Hakii.AI is Africa's first AI-powered legal research platform — purpose-built for the region's advocates, researchers, and legal professionals. Unlike global legal AI tools that are trained on US and UK case law, Hakii.AI is trained on over 100 years of East African legislation, case law, and legal commentary across eight jurisdictions, in partnership with Law Africa, the region's most comprehensive legal database.

​The platform delivers comprehensive, citation-accurate legal research in minutes — research that would previously require days of paralegal time and access to databases priced beyond the reach of most East African practitioners. Its core capabilities include AI-powered legal research with numbered citations from East African sources, deep research reports for complex matters, and real-time gazette and legislative monitoring across East African jurisdictions.

​Hakii.AI is the only AI legal research platform trained specifically on the legal context of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the broader East African Community. It is built for every professional whose work depends on accurate, fast, and jurisdictionally precise legal intelligence  from the managing partner at a commercial firm to the legal researcher at a civil society organisation to the law student preparing their first moot.

​QHALA : Qhala is a pan-African digital transformation and innovation management firm headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. Qhala works with organisations across Africa to design, build, and deploy technology-driven solutions that address real structural challenges on the continent. Its work spans four verticals: QTrust, QConsulting, and QLab — covering digital transformation advisory, product development, AI and data, and innovation research.

​Qhala is the technology and product partner behind Hakii.AI, responsible for the platform's architecture, product development, and go-to-market strategy. Its broader mission is to position Africa as an owner and architect of its own digital future — not merely a consumer of technology built elsewhere. The Hakii.AI partnership with Law Africa is a direct expression of that mission: building AI that knows African law, for African practitioners.

​Contact: pr@qhala.com