On Saturday 7th December 2024, the UK Ugandan Lawyers Association (UULA) was launched by Nimisha Jayant Madhvani, the High Commissioner of the Republic of Uganda to the United Kingdom (UK).
The occasion took place at the Uganda High Commission in London. UULA is an organisation that brings together Ugandan legal professionals living and working in the UK.
Some of the association’s objectives include providing legal support to Ugandans in the UK, mentoring and supporting aspiring Ugandan lawyers in the UK, cooperating with other professional bodies to share knowledge, experience and expertise, keeping abreast of any developments in policy, law and practice affecting Ugandans in the UK, among others.
UULA’s members include solicitors, barristers, legal academics, legal executives, trainees and law students. The launch was well attended in person and with over 1,600 guests attending online.
The association also received video recordings from some legal practitioners in Uganda, notably, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, the Attorney General of Uganda, Anthony Asiimwe, the vice president of the Uganda Law Society, lady justice Margaret Mutonyi, Simon Peter Kinobe. SC, Pheona Nabasa Wall. SC, Owekitibwa David FK. Mpanga, Dr Daniel Ronald Ruhweza, Eron Kiiza, among others, giving their remarks at the launch of the organisation.
In this article, I am going to tell you a story about my journey as a young lawyer in the UK. Thereafter, I will highlight why and how young Ugandan lawyers living in the UK can join UULA, after which I will make a few acknowledgements, and conclude.
Whilst doing my law degree at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, UK, I wondered how I would make it to become a solicitor in the very competitive world of training contracts (TCs), let alone gaining legal work experience in the UK. I did not know what the future held. For the benefit of those who might not know what a TC is, a TC is a two year period of legal training that one does prior to qualifying as solicitor.
TCs are very difficult to get. According to the 2019 Annual Statistics Report of the UK’s Law Society, the average number of students qualifying with a law degree between 2011 and 2019 was 23,413. Of them, an average of 5,757 secured a Training contract. That is roughly 25%. This rate dropped by 11% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not great odds.
Towards the end of my law degree, I reached out to Thomas Ddumba, a Ugandan lawyer based in the UK whose articles I had been reading online, who was very gracious to me. In February 2020, shortly before COVID, Thomas sent me an email, inviting me to a lunch meeting of Ugandan lawyers, which I could not wait to attend.
It was in this meeting that Irene Serukenya Kamya talked about the idea of forming a UK-Ugandan lawyers WhatsApp group, where we could network and possibly refer work to each other. In this WhatsApp group, I used to share the articles that I had authored as a law student and got published in Uganda’s leading newspapers, and later on, in The East African.
Similarly, I used to share, and still do share videos from my YouTube channel called, “Kato Mpanga”, an inspirational and educational channel, which I would like to request you to subscribe to, by the way. It was from these articles and videos that I shared which I believe piqued the interest of Frances NK Ddungu Smith, a solicitor on the forum, and currently the chairperson of UULA, who reached out to me and gave me some career guidance.
At the time, Fran was recruiting for her organisation, the Arbitration and Mediation Society of Uganda (AMSU), which I was happy to join.
In May 2021, I had referred Fran to a friend, Joel Basoga, an alumnus of the University of Oxford, among others, who I had met in May 2019, at an Oxford Peace Talks event in honour of Kofi Annan, at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.
Joel hosted Fran on one of the Zoom career talks by CloudVision to talk about “Careers in Arbitration and Mediation”. After this session, Fran called and asked me about what I was up to. At the time, I was almost done with my Master of Laws in Legal Practice (LLM/LPC) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).
An opening had arisen at one of the organisations that Fran works for, and she thought I would be a good fit for it. She asked me for my curriculum vitae (CV), and gave me an excellent recommendation for the job, and the rest was history. I had taken my first step in my legal career, which, in my view, can be an incredibly difficult thing, especially for ethnic minorities in the UK.
Fran trained me in my role and encouraged me, after settling in the position, to start looking for a TC. After about 7 months of making over 60 training contract applications without any success, I pretty much got 3 training contract offers. Between 2022 and 2023, the average success rate of respondents for my area of law in the UK, who I often represent in appeals, was 1.7%, the lowest on record.
As a trainee solicitor, I managed to win over 5 cases on behalf of my client, meaning that, based on that statistic, our success rate was above the average success rate for respondents, in our field, in the UK. I completed my TC and I was admitted as a solicitor of the senior courts of England and Wales.
Basing on my story, in my view, young Ugandan lawyers living in the UK should join the UK Ugandan Lawyers Association (UULA) because of the following reasons:
Firstly, joining UULA will strengthen your professional identity and purpose. Secondly, it will give you an opportunity to network and build meaningful connections. The journey to success in law is rarely a solitary one. Having strong legal knowledge is not enough.
The right network can be the key to unlocking endless opportunities. Lastly, joining UULA can give you the opportunity to be mentored and to develop professionally.
@KatoMpanga
The author is a solicitor (England and Wales) and the Aspiring Lawyers Executive representative, UULA
