Admission to the Roll of Advocates of the High Court of Uganda: What you need to know

Disclaimer: This information and process are subject to changes by the Law Council. Fees are subject to change by the URSB.

Are you thinking about the next steps after you sit your LDC/ Uganda Bar exams?

Besides applying for jobs or working; I didn’t know that being an enrolled Advocate would provide more opportunities for me. So, I’m writing this to help ease your application process. It takes between 6 months to 1 year to get approval from the Law Council, depending on the application load.

You need to start as early as you can, to get your certification from the Uganda Law Council to be licensed to practice and appear in the Ugandan Courts of Law. Please note that these documents have to be acquired in duplicate as you will be required to deliver two files to the Registry of the Law Council.

Required documentation:

• Application seeking eligibility: The first step is to draft an application to the Secretary of the Law Council for a certificate of eligibility to enroll as an Advocate. This takes the form of an ordinary letter.
• Affidavit in support of Application: This is followed by an affidavit in support of the application for a certificate of eligibility.
• Certification of Academic Certificates: A certified certificate of completion of a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a PostGraduate Diploma in Legal Practice. (These will be annexed to the affidavit in support of the application). The certification of your transcripts can easily be done at your respective institutions of study after paying the prescribed fees.
• Recommendation Letters: You will require two recommendation letters from Advocates who have three years standing on the Roll of Advocates in Uganda, one of whom must have been your Professional Advisor at LDC. (These are also annexed to the affidavit). It is easy to get a recommendation from a PA at LDC if you indicate that it is for enrollment, even if they did not know you while at the bar.
• Passport Photos: You will require three recent colored passport photographs. (You must take these in a black suit, and a white shirt in front of a white background). I took mine fully robbed because it is the picture that is printed onto your certificate of enrollment.
• Registration of the Affidavit: You will need to register the affidavit accompanying the application for eligibility as a document on the Online Business Registration System (OBRS) at a fee of UGX 55,000 (Please confirm the current fees before paying since the fee structure keeps changing). If you don’t have an OBRS account, you can create one by following the steps on this link https://obrs.ursb.go.ug/register.
• Application fees: Payment of the Law Council application fees of UGX 50,000 (Please confirm the current fees before paying since the fee structure keeps changing) to a Bank. I would advise paying it at the DTB Bank located at the URSB offices in Georgian courts.

After obtaining and complying with the above certifications and documentation, you can purchase two manilla files in which you put all the documents listed above, passport photos (3) plus the receipt of payment of the application fees. Deliver the files to the Registry Department of the Law Council located at Georgian House, Nakasero.

Once the Law Council has reviewed and approved your documents, the Secretary of the Law Council will issue you a notice to be gazetted in the Uganda Gazette for your application. There is no prescribed time within which this notice will be issued due to the speed at which applications are processed, but once you have approval, you will receive a call on the mobile phone number you leave behind on submission of your documents.

You will then collect the notice from the Law Council Registry and take it to the Uganda Gazette located on the 1st floor of Georgian House, URSB building for gazetting. This will attract gazette fees of UGX 300,000 which you will pay in cash and receive a receipt.

The notice in the gazette will run for 14 days and upon expiry of those days, you will pick up the gazetted notice from the Gazette (1st floor Georgian House, URSB offices) and return the gazetted notice to the Registry of the Law Council.

Upon submission of the gazetted notice, you will wait for the Law Council’s determination of your application upon its sitting. The frequency of the sittings is not predictable but I’d advice that you check in every month to see if your application has been determined.

Once the Law Council sits and approves your application, the Chief Registrar will enter your name on the Roll of Advocates of Uganda on a date and time designated by the Law Council. In the event that your application was not approved, you will check the notices issued to see whether you need to make any changes or whether you need to re-apply.

Upon entry of your name on the roll of Advocates, you will apply to the Chief Registrar for a Practicing Certificate on payment of a mandatory UGX 500,000 (Please confirm the current fees before paying since the fee structure keeps changing) members subscription fee to Uganda Law Society and 20 USD (Please confirm the current fees before paying since the fee structure keeps changing) as subscription to the East African Law Society.

A few things to note:

Most people’s applications get rejected on the tiniest of details. Its is better to make sure your application has everything than to be rejected for a flimsy reason. I have listed some tips an tricks to ensure that you are fully compliant:

• Capitalize all the letters that need to be capitalized: Names; reference to the ‘Court’ or ‘Law Council’ has to be capitalized as well.
• Proper punctuation of your sentences. Full stops and commas at the right locations.
• Your affidavit has to have the exact date of graduation as your transcript. Don’t mix them up. If you graduated on 01 July 2024, indicate it as is on the transcript.
• Properly mark your annexures according to the affidavit.
• Get recommendations from Advocates who have at least five practicing certificates.
• Ensure that your recommendation letter has this paragraph: ‘I strongly recommend ___ to the Law Council as a fit and proper person for the issuance of a certificate of eligibility for enrollment as an advocate of the High Court of Uganda and all subordinate courts.’
• It is better to have a C/O address that is a Law firm, it has been noted to increase chances of approval in the past.
• When you take your documents to the Registry of the Law Council, ask the officers receiving your application if there is anything you need to change. This is helpful because they know what is required and you can make corrections early enough.

I hope this will be helpful in your pursuit to join the prestigious Uganda Roll of Advocates. It is a tedious process and can take months or even years, but once you are done, you will have more opportunities in the legal space.

PS: I have attached templates for the documents I used during my application that I know will help you. I have additionally highlighted the areas that you need to make changes to. Please remove the highlights and bolded areas that do not need to be bolded in the templates attached.