I saw an advertisement in which it was stated that your service is free. Why am I required to pay a monthly fee to subscribe to the service?

Access to all sections of our website is free. One need not be a member / subscriber to our service to search for judicial decisions on our case search feature. However, to download, save, print or otherwise retrieve documents from our case law database, one must subscribe to the eKLR service (for which we impose a nominal fee starting from 1,000 shillings a month*). This fee is useful in offsetting the additional cost of hosting our large database online, as this increases significantly with the volume of documents downloaded from this website.

Meanwhile, access to all other resources (laws of Kenya, the Kenya gazette, the hansard, legal notices, government publications, external resources, the cause list, articles and commentaries, bench update, case of the week, Bills, judicial profiles and downloads) remains absolutely free for both subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

What is the difference between a corporate and an individual account?

An individual account is tailored for access by a single individual subscriber while a corporate account facilitates joint subscription for research teams with any number of individual researchers. By default, the corporate account consists of a single administrator account, and five researcher accounts. The administrator can create and register more researcher accounts according to the number of users on his / her research team.

In addition, the corporate account attracts more value added services and features (such as free on-site training, a larger download quota, addition to our cause list mailing service and preferential research support). An individual account is tailored for access by individual subscribers. It has a lower monthly download quota and does not attract the value added features included in the corporate package.

Instead of subscribing for a corporate account, is it not better for me to sign up for an individual account and share my account credentials with other persons in my research team?

No. Each account has a fixed download quota of 100 documents monthly. Whenever an individual subscriber shares their user name and password with non-subscribers, the latter’s use of the account depletes the subscribers download quota. In contrast, every single user in a corporate account enjoys a higher quota (150 documents monthly) that is independent of the use of the activity of other users in the same corporate account.

In addition, corporate account holders enjoy value-added tools and services designed to aid researchers on their team to make the most of the eKLR service, such as free on-site training, a larger download quota, addition to our cause list mailing service and preferential research support.

Note that sharing of individual account details is prohibited under our Terms and Conditions of Use. Our system incorporates mechanisms to detect and discourage violations of this provision, maintaining a log of IP addresses that access our database and automatically logging out users whenever two different computers log into the same individual account simultaneously. Persistent violation of this condition will lead to closure of the account in question without prior notice.