Legal Insights & Law Blog

In brief Redundancy is where employment law meets arithmetic. A role is no longer needed, the business must shrink or reorganise, and the law does not stand in the way of either, because no statute obliges a Kenyan employer to keep paying for work that no longer exists. What the law does instead is prescribe […]

In brief Of all the questions an employment lawyer in Nairobi is asked, the commonest arrives within days of a dismissal and is admirably direct: how much would I actually get? The honest answer is more useful than the folklore, which has settled on the idea that an unfair dismissal is worth twelve months’ salary […]

In brief The employment contract is the most consequential commercial document most Kenyan businesses sign, and the one they spend the least on. A supplier agreement worth two hundred thousand shillings gets a lawyer; the hire who will handle the company’s money, customers and secrets for years gets a template somebody found online. This guide […]

In brief Every month, millions of Kenyan payslips perform the same four subtractions, and remarkably few of the people on either side of them could say precisely what each one is, where it goes, or why the net figure is what it is. The answers are not trivia. An employer who gets the computation wrong […]

In short, a commercial lease in Kenya ends in one of two worlds. If the tenancy is controlled under the Landlord and Tenant (Shops, Hotels and Catering Establishments) Act, Cap 301, which it is whenever the lease is unwritten, is written for five years or less, or is written for longer but lets the landlord […]

In short, Kenya has no off-plan statute and no escrow law, which means the developer who sells units before they exist is regulated by a patchwork, the Sectional Properties Act, 2020 on what must be handed to a buyer, the county, NEMA and the National Construction Authority on what must be approved before a spade […]

In brief If you have settled a family trust to hold your land and shares for your children, if you sit as a trustee of a school, a church, a foundation or a staff welfare fund, or if you are planning your estate and have been told that a trust is the answer, the law […]

In short, an apartment in Kenya is held in one of three ways, and the difference decides what you own, whether a bank will lend on it and whether you will be able to sell it. A sectional title is a registered title to the unit itself and is what you should insist on. A […]

In short, a leasehold in Kenya is land held from the national or the county government for a fixed term, and when the term ends the land goes back to the government. It does not renew itself. Section 13 of the Land Act, 2012 and the Land (Extension and Renewal of Leases) Rules, 2017 give […]

In short, the Sectional Properties Act, 2020 gave the owners of every registered long-term sublease over an apartment, flat, maisonette, townhouse or office two years from 28 December 2020 to convert it into a sectional title, and the two years ran out on 28 December 2022 with no extension. An unconverted sublease is not void […]