"Promoting Prosperity Through the Rule of Law"

Back in Kampala, we spent the week conducting a seminar through the International Law Institute’s African Centre for Legal Excellence. Luckily, we had a small class: Margaret, from the Tanzania Insurance Board; Robert, who worked for the Kenya Power Authority; Isaac, from the Zambia Telecommunications Agency; another Isaac, from a high-end Kampala law firm; and Daniel, a lecturer at Makerere, who we met at the conference in Nairobi. Having a small group and five days to spend with them made this training session one of the highlights of our trip thus far.

Plus, these participants had a good sense of humor. The participants in the other sessions -- including a group of Southern Sudanese legislators studying legislative drafting and Tanzanians studying good governance -- could not believe that legal writing could generate as much laughter as it did. For example, in a debate among the participants on the reasons why lawyers should or should not use “legalese,” we heard all of the standard arguments, but this time we heard a new one. According to Robert, at least in Kenya, legalese can be used to pick up girls in bars. We had a hard time imagining this technique working in the U.S.: “Hey baby, want to come up and see my res judicata?”

And during the week, we learned as much from the participants as they did from us. Enlightening lunchtime conversations tended to focus on the problems with African leaders; law firm politics and billing practices; and some of the more esoteric traditions from different tribes, including hiring someone to sleep with a woman’s dead body if she refused to be “inherited” by her husband’s relatives after her husband’s death and having a father-in-law deflower his son’s new bride.