The Legal Innovations and Strategy Practice is a cross-cutting practice that drives innovation in legal practice and ensures the Firm leverages the opportunities arising in emerging ecosystems such as the startup ecosystem. The practice team develops and drives various initiatives and projects that help the Firm reach underserved or unique clients and ensure effective and efficient client services.
In the evolving legal practice landscape, including the accelerating growth of startups whose legal needs significantly vary from established firms, and the growing recognition that with the maturing of technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, the way we practice law must change and the Firm is at the forefront of driving this change. Greater flexibility, agility, and greater use of legal tech to deliver legal services is key in this landscape.
The Practice is currently running or involved in a number of key initiatives including:
ANZA VILLAGE:
The Firm is a co-founder at Anza Village (https://anzavillage.africa) and a legal services partner at Startaz.io. Anza Village prides itself as the “Entrepreneurs Launchpad” and is a community of startups, entrepreneurs, startup enablers, investors and other players in the startup ecosystem focused on enabling startups to grow, scale and have a positive societal impact. Startaz.io is a platform that leverages technology to deliver a range of professional services to startups and other businesses, including legal services.
LEGAL TECH:
The Firm, in partnership with technology partners, is working to drive the reach of technology in the legal services sector, including within in-house legal departments.
Through the initiative around legal tech, the Firm is working to build platforms and software for better delivery of legal services and management of legal processes such as contract management.
SME Retainer Service (SRS): The small and medium enterprises (SME) Retainer Service is the Firm’s initiative to provide tailor-made and cost-effective legal services to small and medium-sized businesses. The Service is aimed at supporting SMEs to navigate both the regulatory environment in the sector in which the SMEs operate as well as to support them in meeting regulatory/compliance and other legal requirements for their operations. It ensures that SMEs, which do not have in-house legal expertise have continuous legal support to prevent and mitigate legal risks as opposed to ad-hoc engagement with lawyers, in many cases, only when they are already in problems.
THE STARTUP DESK:
The Startup Desk (https://sisule.law/the-startup-desk/) is a dedicated platform to provide tailored, high-quality, practical, and cost-effective legal services to startups and disruptors. Through this platform, the Firm walks with startups and disruptors to support them navigate both the regulatory environment and meeting their legal requirements for their operations and scaling-up endeavors.
Our Legal Innovations and Strategy Practice Group is led by Ms. Wangechi Wahome as the Team Leader. The other members of the Practice are Sisule Musungu, Chege Waitara, and Andrew Mwango.
