The Laws of Kenya Grey Book
The Laws of Kenya Grey Book is an important companion for Judges, Magistrates and legal practitioners. It is comprised of selected Acts of Parliament governing the substance and procedure respecting matters commonly arising in criminal and civil litigation, namely,

The revised and updated edition is published in loose-leaf format for ease of updating and bound in a hard durable cover for extended shelf life.

The Kenya Law Review
The Kenya Law Review is the country’s inaugural official law journal. Published annually, provides a forum for the scholarly analysis of Kenyan Law and interdisciplinary academic research on the law. It features research papers and peer-reviewed articles from legal scholars, judicial officers, legal practitioners, students, law and society scholars as well as articles on finance and economics. The Kenya Law Review Journal will establish itself as the preferred reference for both international and local readers in discussions on Kenyan Law.

Laws of Kenya and Law Reports Online
Since its launch in October 2004, the Council’s website (www.kenyalaw.org) has evolved both in its range of products and in their scope. Through the website, Kenya became the first and hitherto the only country in Africa, to have its complete national legislation available online for free. The online version of the Laws of Kenya followed the launch of the ‘Case Search’ service which provided online access to the latest court decision.

The online product portfolio has since expanded to include:

Bench Research Hotline (BRH)
The Bench Research Hotline (BRH) is a research help desk at the Secretariat of the Council with a team of four legal researchers and a fully equipped call-centre dedicated to receiving research queries from judicial officers, conducting legal research and providing feedback on the queries. The objective of this project is to support the administration of justice by providing judicial officers, especially the Judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, with dedicated research facilities. The BRH utilises an online ticketing system for logging and managing research queries from judicial officers and applies online legal research tools.

Case Track & Digital Recording & Transcription of Court Proceedings
Case Track is a measure aimed at improving efficiency in the Judiciary and reducing the backlog of cases through the design and implementation of a computerized case management system. The development of the system involves computerized data capture of pending cases and storing it in a central, secure and robust database system which is capable of processing the data and giving reports relevant to various classes of users, i.e. Judicial Officers, Judiciary administrators, para-legal staff, advocates and litigants.

As a parallel and complementary project, the Council is pioneering a project for the digital recording and transcription of court proceedings. The objective of the project is to apply state-of-the-art recording and transcription technology in order to aid the management of court records. The project involves the installation of voice recording equipment in the courts with simultaneous transcription using word processors. The recording equipment will be wired to backroom where digital equipment for the voice storage and retrieval will be installed.

Wide Area Network
The overall objective of this project is to facilitate the faster and efficient exchange of data between the Council and remote High Court stations by the installation and commissioning of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect the Mombasa Law Courts with the Council’s headquarters in Nairobi and later to expand the network to three other court stations; namely, Kisumu, Eldoret and Nyeri.

The scope of work encompasses the implementation of VPN between Kenya Law Reports head office located at Milimani Commercial Courts and the Mombasa High Court located Shimanzi in Mombasa, on a pilot phase. The success of the pilot phase will determine how the other High courts in Kisumu, Eldoret and Nyeri are ringed in as a separate assignment.

Digitization of Kenya Gazette & Legal Notices
Because the Kenya Gazette and legal notices has been published from the turn of the 20th century, conventional paper publication and archiving cannot serve the rich diversity of archaeological/legacy information: Paper is subject to diminution in quality with the passage of time and it does not lend itself to easy storage, retrieval and sharing of information. Furthermore, paper-based systems take a relatively higher input of physical, financial and human resources to manage. Electronic publication, by contrast, offers opportunities to overcome these difficulties by offering the advantages of: accessibility, reduced cost, interactivity, media capability, and dynamic response. The overall objective of this project is therefore to design and deliver a web-based database containing previous and current Kenya Gazette Notices and Legal Notices.
These projects have been made possible with direct funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ).

The ANKOMA-NTOSO Project
The Akoma Ntoso Project is one of the activities of the United Nations Department for Economics and Social Affairs (UNDESA). The aim of the project is to strengthen Parliaments’ Information Systems in Africa. AKOMA NTOSO stands for Architecture for Knowledge Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies.

The Akoma Ntoso project will allow Parliaments to adopt solutions that foster accessibility, transparency and accountability of Parliamentary documents by deploying an architecture that allows easier implementation of Parliamentary Information Systems and interoperability across African Parliaments, ultimately allowing open access to Parliamentary information. Akoma-Ntoso was endorsed by African Parliaments at the International Conference on Parliaments’ Information Management in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities of ICTs to Strengthen Democracy and Parliamentary Governance" organised by UNDESA and held in Nairobi in February 2005.

The NCLR and the office of the Clerk to the National Assembly are the focal point institutions in Kenya in all matters regarding the Project. Ultimately, the NCLR intends to leverage on the project to consolidate and cross-reference its legal information databases in order to provide the public with, among other benefis, the ability to access point-in-time legislation, i.e., to get a snapshot of the status of the law as it was on a particular date.

Publication of the Complete Laws of Kenya on CD-ROM
In the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, 2007, it is proposed to amend the Revision of Laws Act and the National Council for Law Reporting Act in order to enable the NCLR to undertake the publication and revision of the official Laws of Kenya and to give legal recognition to a digital version of the Laws of Kenya. In anticipation of the passing of this law, the NCLR has in the meantime prepared the terms of reference and project schedule for the publication of the Laws of Kenya on CD-ROM.

Kenya Treaties Series
Kenya does not have a consolidated, up-to-date and publicly accessible list and text of multilateral treaties to which it is a party, (ratified or acceded to) including the treaties it has signed but not ratified. Such a record would allow the Republic to appreciate the scope of its international obligations and to enable it to take appropriate actions relating thereto.

The NCLR, in conjunction of the Treaties and Agreements in the Attorney General’s Office, will undertake a project aimed at producing an online database containing the list and text of multilateral treaties applicable to Kenya. The publication is to be kept up-to date thereafter by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in conjunction with the Attorney General’s Office and the National Council for Law Reporting. The text of the multilateral treaties which have been incorporated into the domestic legal system by Kenya are to be produced in a special Chapter of the Laws of Kenya.

Specialized Law Reports – Procurement Law, Taxation Law, Labour Law and Environmental Law
In its quest to expand its range of online products and meet the information needs of the legal system, the NCLR is to publish on its website the decisions of selected subordinate courts and quasi-judicial tribunals. These include the decisions of the Taxing Master on Taxation of Bills of Costs, the decisions of the Public Procurement Review and Appeals Board, the Industrial Court and the National Environment Tribunal.

ICT Roadshows, Fairs and Exhibitions
As a follow up to its participation in the ICT Development Expo (February 2007) organized by The Ministry of Information and Communications and ICT Village, NCLR has been a regular attendant at the national ICT Roadshows .The NCLR’s stand was awarded the 2nd Best Government Stand at the Kakamega ASK Show held in May, 2007.