Global Outlook Kenyan law firm develops wide-ranging legal practice
A By Brian Cox
ttorney Mwangi Karume’s path to attaining national influence and international persuasion began in a rural Kenyan village where he was born on a coffee farm on which his mother once worked. By contrast, associate attorney Nancy Wagi is a city girl, born and raised in Nairobi, not far actually from the law offices of Njoroge Regeru & Company where the two lawyers practice. The pair represent the ambitions, opportunities, and future of Kenya, which is the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa with aims to transform into a middle-income country by the end of this decade.
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A partner at the firm, Karume heads up the Corporate, Commercial, and Conveyancing law department (referred to as “triple-C”) while Wagi’s practice centers around Dispute Resolution (referred to as “DR”). The two departments occupy separate floors in the office building not far from the Nairobi Arboretum and Karume jokes that “the DR team tends to breathe fresher air because they are up there and we are down here.” Since its formation in 2002, Njoroge Regeru and Company Advocates has forged a reputation for representing diverse legal interests ranging from individuals and small businesses to government institutions and multi-national corporations. Karume joined the firm shortly after it was formed and though he had
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received most of his legal training as a young lawyer in Dispute Resolution, after only five months with the firm he was asked to take over the Corporate and Commercial law department when a colleague left to study in the United States. “It was baptism by fire,” he recalls. He immersed himself in a crash course of learning about conveyancing, the corporate sector, mergers and acquisitions, banking, and capital markets. At the time, the entire department comprised of only him and his assistant. Since those early days 20 years ago, the department has grown under Njoroge Regeru and Karume’s leadership and now the law firm has 10 attorneys practicing in a host of