Digital Conveyancing, Advocates Remuneration Order (ARO) Fee Note Automation & Section 106B Electronic Evidence Compliance for Kenyan Law Firms

In Kenyan legal practice, three recurring statutory calculations determine whether a law firm collects its full legal fees on time and whether its documentary evidence survives a preliminary objection: computing scale fees accurately under the Advocates (Remuneration) Order (ARO), tracking filing deadlines under Order 50 of the Civil Procedure Rules, 2010 (including the December–January statutory freeze and gazetted Kenyan public holidays), and annexing a compliant Certificate of Electronic Record under Section 106B(4) of the Evidence Act (Cap 80) whenever digital printouts are produced in court.

Alongside its core court-bundling studio, KortiBundle (kortibundle.com) provides three free, interactive statutory practice tools engineered specifically for Kenyan advocates, pupils, and litigation clerks: the Kenyan Advocates Remuneration Order (ARO) Fee Calculator, the Order 50 Civil Procedure Time & Deadline Calculator, and the Section 106B(4) Electronic Evidence Certificate Generator.

1. Automating Advocates Remuneration Order (ARO) Fee Notes & Bills of Costs

Drafting an Advocate-Client Fee Note or a Party-and-Party Bill of Costs for taxation before a Taxing Master requires applying tiered sliding-scale brackets across different schedules of the Advocates (Remuneration) Order, 2014:

• Schedule 1 (Conveyancing, Transfers, Mortgages & Charges): Tiered percentage brackets on property value or security principal, with distinct scales for drawing vs. perusing and completing securities.
• Schedule 5 (Incorporation of Companies, Debentures & Commercial Agreements): Sliding-scale instruction fees based on nominal share capital or transaction value.
• Schedule 6 (High Court, ELRC & ELC Party-and-Party & Advocate-Client Litigation Costs): Instruction fees scaled by the value of the subject matter determined from the pleadings, judgment, or settlement—plus automatic computation of the 1/3 Getting-Up Fee (where a matter proceeds to trial/hearing), the 50% Part B Advocate-Client uplift, and 16% VAT on professional fees.
• Schedule 7 (Subordinate / Magistrates' Courts Scale) & Schedule 3 (Probate & Administration): Tiered instruction fees for lower-court suits and estate grants.

# Deterministic Kenyan ARO Schedule 6 Sliding-Scale Instruction Fee Engine
from decimal import Decimal, ROUND_HALF_UP

def compute_schedule_6_instruction_fee(
    subject_value_kes: Decimal,
    include_getting_up_fee: bool = True,
    is_advocate_client_part_b: bool = False,
) -> dict:
    # Statutory tiered brackets (KES) under Schedule 6A
    brackets = [
        (Decimal("500000"), Decimal("0.12"), Decimal("75000")),     # First 500k (min 75,000)
        (Decimal("500000"), Decimal("0.10"), Decimal("0")),         # Next 500k (500k - 1M)
        (Decimal("19000000"), Decimal("0.02"), Decimal("0")),       # Next 19M (1M - 20M)
        (Decimal("230000000"), Decimal("0.015"), Decimal("0")),     # Next 230M (20M - 250M)
        (None, Decimal("0.01"), Decimal("0")),                      # Over 250M at 1.0%
    ]
    remaining = max(Decimal("0"), subject_value_kes)
    base_fee = Decimal("0")

    for cap, rate, floor_min in brackets:
        if remaining <= 0:
            break
        slice_amt = remaining if cap is None else min(remaining, cap)
        tier_fee = max(floor_min, (slice_amt * rate))
        base_fee += tier_fee
        remaining -= slice_amt

    getting_up = (base_fee / Decimal("3")) if include_getting_up_fee else Decimal("0")
    subtotal = base_fee + getting_up
    part_b_uplift = (subtotal * Decimal("0.50")) if is_advocate_client_part_b else Decimal("0")
    net_professional_fee = subtotal + part_b_uplift
    vat_16 = (net_professional_fee * Decimal("0.16")).quantize(Decimal("0.01"), rounding=ROUND_HALF_UP)

    return {
        "instruction_fee_kes": round(base_fee, 2),
        "getting_up_fee_kes": round(getting_up, 2),
        "part_b_uplift_kes": round(part_b_uplift, 2),
        "vat_16_kes": float(vat_16),
        "total_payable_kes": round(net_professional_fee + vat_16, 2),
    }

You can run these calculations interactively and copy a full tier-by-tier fee schedule using the KortiBundle ARO Fee Calculator.

2. Order 50 Civil Procedure Time Computation: Avoiding the December Freeze Trap

Computing a 14-day, 21-day, or 60-day statutory filing window in Kenya is governed by Order 50 of the Civil Procedure Rules, 2010 and Section 57 of the Interpretation and General Provisions Act (Cap 2):

• Order 50 Rule 2 (Periods Less Than Six Days): Where any limited time less than six days from or after any date or event is appointed or allowed for doing any act, Sundays, Christmas Day, Good Friday, and any other gazetted public holiday are excluded from the computation.
• Order 50 Rule 3 (Last Day Falling on a Sunday or Public Holiday): Where the time for doing any act expires on a Sunday or other day on which the court offices are closed, the act is duly done if done on the next day on which the offices are open.
• Order 50 Rule 4 (The December 21 to January 13 Statutory Freeze): Unless the court otherwise directs, the period between the 21st day of December in any year and the 13th day of January in the year next following (both days inclusive) shall be omitted from any computation of time for the amending, delivering, or filing of any pleading or the doing of any other act.

Our Order 50 Civil Procedure Time Calculator models every rule of Order 50 Rules 1–8 alongside Kenyan public holidays, giving litigation clerks an auditable day-by-day ledger of counted vs. excluded days.

3. Section 106B(4) Evidence Act Electronic Evidence Certificates

Since the Court of Appeal's landmark decisions on electronic evidence (including County Assembly of Kisumu & 2 Others v Kisumu County Assembly Service Board & 6 Others), annexing WhatsApp messages, emails, M-Pesa statements, CCTV stills, or smartphone photographs to an affidavit without a compliant Section 106B(4) Certificate of Electronic Record risks having those exhibits struck out as inadmissible.

The KortiBundle Section 106B Certificate Generator walks the deponent through the four statutory pillars of Section 106B(2) and 106B(4)—identifying the electronic record, specifying the exact device make/model/serial/IMEI, confirming lawful operational control and continuous normal operation during the material period, and generating a court-ready certificate that can be appended directly into your bundle.