or most of the last decade, the strategic question in commercial litigation in Kenya was how to manage time, both the time the court would take, and the time the other side would take to use it against you. The 2025 procedural reforms have begun, quietly, to invert that question.
The Commercial and Tax Division is moving cases through their first three milestones faster than at any point we have tracked. The reforms themselves are familiar, front-loaded evidence, narrower pleading, active case management, but the effect on strategy is the part worth thinking about.
Front-loaded evidence changes the brief
Where pleadings used to be the place a case was framed and disclosure was the place it was won, witness statements and document bundles are now the locus of both. A weak first statement is the most expensive document a commercial client can file: it sets the frame the court reads for the rest of the matter.
- The witness statement is now the pleading. Treat it as one.
- Documentary annexures filed with the statement are part of the record; documents introduced later face friction.
- The narrative the client wants the court to hold is in front of the judge by the case-management conference, or it is not in front of the judge at all.
Case-management is now an event, not a formality
Judges are using the case-management conference to set hard deadlines and to indicate, with increasing candour, the parts of a case they do not find persuasive. This is helpful, provided you have prepared for the indication. We are seeing matters settle in the weeks immediately after a CMC at a rate we did not see in 2023.
Interim relief is moving in days, not months
Applications for injunctions and freezing orders are being heard substantively within ten to fourteen days. The strategic effect is that the urgent application has become a usable tool again, rather than a placeholder until the case can be heard on its merits in a year. Whether to apply, and what to apply for, is now a question that can be answered on a commercial timeline.
What we are telling clients
Three changes follow from the new tempo. First, invest more in the first witness statement than felt necessary three years ago. Second, prepare the settlement position before the case-management conference, not after. Third, treat interim relief as a live option, not a last resort. The cost of doing each of these well is paid back many times over by the matters that now close in months rather than years.