The 5:43 AM Wake-Up Call
The alarm goes off before dawn, but your day started hours earlier. By 5:43 AM, there’s already a voice note from a client on WhatsApp. You listen while brushing your teeth, heart racing, because the note ends with: “Counsel, please update me — I’m very stressed.” And suddenly, your day begins with someone else’s anxiety before you’ve even had breakfast.
"Well begun is half done." — Aristotle
The Court Diary Juggling Act
You finally arrive at the office, clutching a stack of documents. Today, you’re supposed to be in Milimani Court for a filing and then in High Court for a hearing. But the cause list has changed overnight, and now both matters overlap. You start calling colleagues, negotiating who will handle what. You breathe through traffic, mentally rehearsing submissions that may never happen on time.
The "Quick Question" Epidemic
Back at the office, you sit down to draft a crucial affidavit. Ten minutes later, interruptions hit: the clerk can’t find a file, a client walks in unexpectedly, and a colleague asks for guidance on a consent. Every interruption is small, but they stack like bricks. By noon, the document is still blank, and the email reminders keep piling up.
The Case of the Missing Document
Documents, it seems, have a life of their own. The affidavit you swore you saved yesterday has vanished. Not in downloads, not in emails, not on the server. You start recreating it from memory, wondering if you’ll ever see the “final” version again.
Billing: The Unpaid Detective Work
Then comes billing — or rather, the chaos of it. You generate invoices in between hearings, but by evening, you’re unsure who’s been billed, who has paid, and who owes you. Some payments arrived days ago, buried in Mpesa notifications you didn’t check. Others you forgot to invoice at all. Billing feels less like a routine task and more like detective work: checking emails, chat threads, and bank statements just to know what money is actually yours.
The Expense Leak
Expenses pile on like a quiet storm. You’ve paid court fees, stamps, courier charges, and travel costs out of your own pocket, and keeping track feels impossible. Receipts get lost. Reimbursements get delayed. Weeks later, you’re still reconstructing numbers, trying to figure out who owes what. Money flows out before it comes in, and the administrative burden is heavier than any case.
The Delegation Black Hole
And tasks — assigning them, tracking them, following up — is another layer of chaos. You tell your clerk to file this, to follow up on that, to prepare the bundle for tomorrow. But once the task leaves your mouth, it disappears into a black hole. Hours later, you discover half of it wasn’t done, or was done incorrectly, or nobody updated you at all. Delegation without a trace, accountability without a system.
The Mental Toll
By the time the day ends, your body leaves the office, but your mind never does. Deadlines, client anxieties, misplaced documents, untracked invoices, unpaid expenses — they follow you home. You check WhatsApp one last time, hoping nothing urgent landed while you were driving, and mentally prepare to do it all again tomorrow.
This is the daily life of an advocate: juggling court appearances, clients, documents, billing, expenses, and tasks, all while hoping nothing slips through the cracks. The law itself is logical; the work, chaotic. And the pain points? They’re the hidden battles no one sees, silently draining time, energy, and sometimes, even passion.
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