Users of open legal content in Africa share their experiences
Lawyers - Advocates - Attorneys
“You are helping a lot of people especially in Tanzania where we had less legal materials online and there were no trustworthy platforms. TanzLII is a game changer.”
— Anonymous
ADVOCATE (TANZANIA)
"I really appreciate this innovation as it has immensely improved my ability to prepare well reasoned and well researched material."
— Anonymous
ADVOCATE (UGANDA)
“Textbooks and printed law reports are expensive to buy. Thank you for availing information at the click of a button.”
— Anonymous
ADVOCATE (ZIMBABWE)
Judges - Magistrates - Judicial staff
“I even use ZimLII during a recess before I deliver a judgment on an issue.
Prior to the availability of ZimLII, Magistrates tended to ask the lawyers appearing before them for hard copies of the legal material they presented in court.”
— Nowell Mupeiwa
REGIONAL MAGISTRATE, HARARE MAGISTRATES’ COURTS
I am exceedingly grateful ... I have used [ULII] as student from my LLB to LDC, used it as an associate and now as a Judge’s research officer currently stationed at Mbale High Court. Computerized research like this simplifies work and increases one’s productivity as compared to using physical libraries. It directs one spot on which cases and text books to read. To the donors that make this possible, we can’t thank you enough."
— Anonymous
HIGH COURT STAFFER (UGANDA)
“SeyLII is a life saver and a go-to tool. Subscription databases are not available in the Court Library.”
— Anonymous
COURT STAFFER (SEYCHELLES)
Journalists - Media
“Besides using ZimLII for our organisations, I pick cases from ZimLII which I then discuss in a column in the Sunday Mail. That way legal information reaches a much wider audience. Many people don’t get to hear about the law. People read it, because I get a lot of feedback.”
— Sylvia Chirawu-Mugomba
DIRECTOR, WOMEN IN LAW IN SOUTHERN AFRICA (WILSA) (ZIMBABWE)
We report on court cases every day, one requirement of our editorial policy is that we must see actual court documents for any court case we want to report. We have a correspondent at one of the major courts but for 80% of the court cases we report on, our writers have been trained on how to use the advanced search feature to get relevant documents from Kenya Law. Another thing we do is make sure every Friday at 11am we have downloaded the gazette to gain fast and first hand information on govt announcements even before legacy media houses.”
— Brian Muuo
HEAD OF DIGITAL STRATEGY, KENYANS.CO.KE (KENYA)
“This is an essential resource in my work ... I use it often. It has been extremely useful when undertaking open source investigations and reputational analysis of various subjects.”
— Steve Mbogo
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST (EAST AFRICA)
Legal Aid - Law Clinics
"Around 80% of the research we do is on ULII because it is the quickest source. We use ULII to do the research to create posts for social media, SMS, radio, training manuals; all our platforms. It's not only useful for looking up something we don't know, but for updating content with changes in the law and ensuring what we lawyers learned at university is still the case."
— Phoebe Murungi
DIRECTOR OF LEGAL SERVICES, BAREFOOT LAW (UGANDA)
"KenyaLaw is my staple for finding reliable, trustworthy, updated content... it is an integral part of my life as a law student and entrepreneurial law clinician. The alternative would be going through physical copies of the Kenya Law Reports, and you don't have a CTRL+F [in-page keyword search] for that!"
— Tasneem Pirbhai
CLINICIAN, STRATHMORE LAW CLINIC (KENYA)
Law Students
"I strongly and deeply appreciate the efforts that the LII team puts in to make it possible for people like me to access legal information easily and freely. I owe you guys my entire career. THANK YOU INDEED. As a student, am unable to pay subscriptions therefore free resources like LII save the day for me."
— Ssevume Edward
LAW STUDENT (UGANDA)
"I want to thank you for the great efforts that help thousands of African students. Most of us are not well financially capable for subscription-based legal databases and thus by keeping LII a free library then it is and will always be a helpful hand. Thank you again on behalf of Tanzanian university students."
— Geofrey Sadick
LAW STUDENT (TANZANIA)
"Whatever happens I don't wish for this site to shut down. It has helped me a lot because access to other sources like Lexis is expensive and we don't earn enough to spare. I use ZimLII all the time, like now doing assignments. I'm three years down, two to go [on my degree] and ZimLII has been a reliable friend. My school unsubscribed [from Juta] 2019."
— Anonymous
LAW STUDENT (ZIMBABWE)