Building a successful a law firm in the US as a Kenyan is less about courtroom drama than about managing the economics of survival.

The setup costs can run into millions of shillings, the career paths starting as a caregiver to pay tuition, or leveraging diaspora networks to build a client base from scratch.

Charles Wanjohi has practised law in the US for 20 years. He is the founder of Wanjohi and Muli Law Firm Plc, with offices in North Carolina, Dallas, Seattle, and Boston, with much of the work concentrated in Boston.

He studied law at the University of Nairobi and was admitted as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya in 2006. Just nine months into that admission, he travelled to the US to visit.

“I saw this nice country, and I saw opportunities here, so I decided to stay,” he says.

As a foreign-trained lawyer, Charles was able to sit for the New York bar exam without returning to law school. But before he could take that step, he spent several years simply working out his immigration status in the country, a period during which he did no legal work.

He was finally admitted as an attorney in New York in 2010. He then trained under another Kenyan attorney already established in the US.

“I was lucky,” he says. “One of them was gracious enough to mentor me into the practice.”

In 2013, he partnered with Mueni Muli, a Kenyan lawyer educated in the US, and together they founded their firm. “That’s what we’ve been doing for the last 13 years,” he says.

Sh12.9 million capital

Starting a law firm from nothing required substantial money, yet a new firm has no credit history, which drives up the cost of commercial leases.

Add that to the cost of furniture, computers, electronics, a mandatory trust account, professional liability insurance, and ongoing marketing, and the total climbs quickly.

“To start on your own will require somewhere between Sh6.4 million to Sh12.9 million to have a decent law firm,” says the 46-year-old.

Even something as small as an office desk, Charles points out, could cost Sh258,000, or as much as Sh1.5 million, depending on the choices made along the way.

Their firm focused heavily on immigration law because of the goodwill they received from Kenyans already living in the US. “They push us every day,” Charles says. The firm also handles commercial transactions and family law across the states where it operates.

The most rewarding moments, he says, come from reuniting families and defending clients facing deportation.

“When you defend somebody facing deportation and they are not deported, when you represent somebody who is applying for asylum having been persecuted in their home countries and they end up getting safe haven here in the US, it’s very rewarding.”

The hardest part cuts the other way. Many of his clients lack legal status, which often means they lack steady income to pay their legal fees.

“Payment of our legal fees is the biggest challenge,” he admits.

Charles still holds a current practising certificate in Kenya and remains a partner in a separate firm there, Wanjohi and Muli Company Advocates, which handles matters connecting the US and Kenya.

Charles Wanjohi, 46, is an attorney practising law for 20 years. He is a partner and founder of Wanjohi and Muli Law Firm PLLC with offices in North Carolina, Dallas, Seattle and Boston.

Photo credit: Pool

“At the end of the day, your comfort and your source of solace is a happy family,” says the father of three, who spends much of his time outside work shuttling them to school and after-school activities.

Looking back at the young advocate he once was, hustling in Nairobi with little more than hope, Charles offers himself a simple message.

“Thank you for keeping up the faith,” he says. “I learned that there’s no shortcut, so you have to sweat to get what you want. And I kept that faith and here I am.”

"Cost like Sh65,000 for everything"

Gladys Mogaka is in her 40s and licensed to practise law in both Kenya and the US. She is now predominantly based in the US and the founder Law office of Gladys Mogaka Plc. As an attorney, her firm focuses on immigration law, trademarks, and copyright, and she is also quietly building a technology venture on the side. Before any of that, she was a young lawyer in Kenya.

She completed her Bachelor’s degree at Kampala International University in Uganda, graduating in 2007. She then attended the Kenya School of Law and passed her bar exam in 2009, followed by an internship at the law firm AH Malik and Company.

“I was very ambitious,” she says of herself back then.

A volunteer trip to deliver a speech at the United Nations about technology and the girl child changed the course of her life. There she met students pursuing their Master’s degrees in the US, and with extended family already living there, she felt encouraged to apply too.

Gladys Mogaka, in her 40s, is an attorney practising immigration, trademark and copyright law. She is the founder of Law Office of Gladys Mogaka PLLC based in the United States.

Photo credit: Pool

She was accepted at Harvard, New York Law School, and Michigan State. She chose Michigan State because the school offered her a 50 percent scholarship. “My Master’s was very expensive,” she says, “and as an international student it's very hard for you to get student loans.”

She compressed a two-year Master’s programme into a single year, joining in January 2013 and finishing that December. To manage it, she worked nights as a caregiver while attending classes during the day. “I just did not have a social life,” she says. “So I used to carry books to work.”

She started that caregiving job earning Sh1,000 an hour, and after being trained to administer medication to residents, her pay rose to Sh1,400 an hour. “I was so excited and happy,” she recalls.

Passing a bar exam abroad tested her in ways she had not expected. She registered for the New York bar exam, a process that took about six months, and had to master a completely new body of state law stacked on top of what she already knew from Uganda, Kenya, and Michigan.

“The nuances are so complicated,” she says, describing how the same crime can carry a different number of legal degrees in every jurisdiction.

She sat for the exam in the summer of 2014 and waited until around November that year for her results. Her first legal job came at Ernst and Young, but she was let go a few months later when a major client required attorneys who already held their physical license.

She found steadier ground at Deloitte, working there from 2015 until she resigned in 2020, during the pandemic. “I knew if I put seven years in my own firm, I will make three times what they were going to pay me in seven years,” she says of her reasoning at the time.

While still employed at Deloitte, Gladys quietly registered her own law firm in 2018. She built it on the side at first, driven partly by the steady stream of immigration questions Kenyans around her kept asking.

Registering a law firm in the US, she explains, involves holding a valid licence, choosing a legal structure such as an LLC, and paying processing fees. “It’s not a lot,” she says. “It’s not more than like Sh65,000 for everything.”

Life in the US was not free of prejudice. She recalls being mistaken for a client rather than the attorney during courthouse security checks, and once being asked repeatedly for an interpreter badge instead of being recognised as the lawyer standing in front of a judge.

“I am a lawyer,” she remembers telling the court official. “And she kept asking me, whose lawyer are you interpreting for?” Eventually she pulled out her badge and set it down firmly in front of the woman. “I had to let my work speak for me,” Gladys says. “On so many occasions, my work has spoken for me.”

Today she mentors six students who dream of becoming lawyers, and two Kenyan attorneys have reached out to her directly for guidance on relocating to the US. “That right there, that is what I call successful,” she says. “We have Black girls who have seen me, and they want to be like me.”

"It boils down to two things..."

While Gladys built her law firm through sheer resilience, starting from the very bottom of the ladder in New York and Michigan, Laban Opande took a different route. He bet on the Kenyans in the diaspora who eventually gave him a steady stream of clients.

Laban has run a law firm in the US for 18 years, despite never studying law in Kenya.

He did environmental science as his first degree, with a minor in computer science. He moved to the US immediately after high school.

He got a job at AIG, the insurance and financial group’s IT department, which helped pay 90 percent of his tuition at the University of Phoenix while pursuing his MBA.

Only after that did he attend the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, graduating in 2007. “I was pretty much in school for about 11 years. I’d always admired the likes of James Orengo and Paul Muite,” says Laban, now in his 50s.

Laban Opande, in his 50s, is an attorney practising law in the United States for 18 years. He is a partner and founder of O'Connor Law Firm PC based in Houston and Dallas, Texas.

Photo credit: Pool

After law school, Laban interned with a friend named Solomon Musim, who guided him through his bar admission. The two eventually joined forces permanently in 2009, forming what became the O’Connor Law Firm.

Asked what it takes to open a law firm as a foreigner in the US, Laban does not pretend there is a formula.

“But it boils down to two things. One, it’s just like any other business. You must have business acumen. Then the second one is being a good lawyer. You cannot be a businessman running after money, and you are not delivering for your clients.”

On getting the business running, Laban credits his close ties to the Kenyan community in the US.

“When I started practising, there were not many Kenyan lawyers in the US,” he says. “A majority of African lawyers were Nigerian.”

That gave him a competitive edge. His familiarity within the small Kenyan community provided an early foundation of trust and helped him build his client base.

“It formed the foundation for me in terms of client buildup. But then you still have to deliver. You cannot take it for granted that people know you and then you don’t do the job,” says the lawyer of his Houston-based firm, with a smaller Dallas office, which he runs with a Kenyan partner, other attorneys and support staff.

He started representing Kenyans including families whose relatives died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in 2019.

“That has been probably the most fulfilling case,” he says, describing how he had to explain Kenyan cultural realities, including polygamous marriages, in an American legal system built around a single spouse.

“American law does not recognise some of the things like polygamy,” he says. “We had to manoeuvre through all those and figure out how you are able to capture the Kenyan essence in the American law and still be able to represent them well.”

Besides running his law firm, Laban juggles several other entrepreneurial ventures.

He once ran a restaurant in Houston before selling it, and he still runs a real estate business on the side. “I’m a typical Kenyan,” he laughs.

“You have to have a side gig,” says Laban, who leads the Kenya US Bar Association, with 250 Kenyan-American lawyers and law students.
Nearly two decades ago, he helped found Uhuru Soccer, a team that has become a family affair, with the children of its original players now taking to the pitch alongside their parents.

→ moochieng@ke.nationmedia.com