E-Filing in Kenya: Formatting Rules Advocates Should Know

There's a common assumption that once a court moves to electronic filing, formatting requirements loosen up. Upload a document, and the system takes care of the rest. That's not what the Judiciary's e-filing system does, and treating it that way is how advocates end up with rejected uploads or, worse, accepted uploads that don't actually satisfy the applicable practice directions.

E-filing is a delivery mechanism. It doesn't replace the formatting rules covered in the Supreme Court's, Court of Appeal's, and High Court's practice directions. It sits on top of them. A document has to be correctly formatted before it goes anywhere near the e-filing portal.

What the High Court's 2022 directions actually say about e-filing

Paragraph 16 of the High Court's 2022 Practice Directions, "Electronic Filing and Service of Process," sets out four points:

1. Pleadings and documents shall be filed via the Judiciary's electronic filing system and shall satisfy the criteria specified for acceptance.
2. The e-filing procedure shall be guided by rules and regulations as may be issued from time to time.
3. In the event the electronic filing system is unavailable, the court shall issue directions on the mode of filing.
4. The registry shall serve court processes on advocates and litigants electronically or physically, if the court so directs.

The phrase to pay attention to is "shall satisfy the criteria specified for acceptance." The practice directions don't restate every formatting rule inside Paragraph 16 itself, because those rules already exist elsewhere in the same document, in Paragraph 9 (typing format), Paragraph 10 (case heading), Paragraph 11 (pleading page numbering), and Paragraph 14 (Record of Appeal numbering, including every-tenth-line margin numbers). E-filing acceptance criteria are downstream of those same rules, not a separate, lighter standard.

Case headings have to match the portal's own format

Paragraph 10 requires that the case heading on a document follow the format set out in the Judiciary's electronic filing system, not a static template from a precedent bank. This is a subtle but important point: the authoritative source for heading format is the e-filing system itself, as it currently exists, not a document written in 2022 describing it. If the portal's interface changes how it expects headings structured, the practice direction effectively points you back to the portal to check, rather than freezing the format in place. A firm's precedent templates should be checked against the live e-filing system periodically rather than treated as permanently correct.

Orders under certificate of urgency move fast through e-filing

Paragraph 37 addresses extraction of orders and sets a real deadline: orders on applications under certificate of urgency lodged through the e-filing system shall, in the first instance, be issued by the judge within the system within 24 hours during working days, with an exception carved out for admiralty cases, where orders can be extracted at any time. This cuts both ways for advocates. It means urgent orders move quickly once granted, but it also means a document that fails to meet the e-filing system's acceptance criteria on the way in can cost you that speed entirely, since a rejected or defective upload has to be corrected and resubmitted before the clock on that 24-hour turnaround even starts.

Virtual hearings still route through the e-filing portal

Paragraph 32, "Production of Exhibits During Virtual Hearings," requires that advocates and litigants upload all pleadings and documents necessary for the conduct of a hearing from the e-filing portal, and permits displaying them using the share function during the virtual session. This means the e-filing system isn't only a submission point at the start of a case, it's the working document repository referenced throughout a matter's life, including live in front of a judge during a virtual hearing. A document with the wrong pagination or missing tenthlining doesn't just create a risk at the filing stage. It can surface again mid-hearing if it needs to be pulled up and referenced by page or line number.

What this means in practice

Put together, three things follow from how the High Court's 2022 directions describe e-filing:

Format before you upload, not after a rejection. The "criteria specified for acceptance" language means the system is checking against the same rules covered elsewhere in the practice directions. If a pleading isn't correctly formatted under Paragraph 9 or 11, or a Record of Appeal is missing every-tenth-line numbering under Paragraph 14, fixing that after an upload rejection wastes time you may not have, particularly on a matter with a filing deadline.

Treat the portal's current interface as the authority on headings, not an old template. Since Paragraph 10 defers to the e-filing system's own format rather than prescribing one directly, a stale precedent template is a real risk. Check periodically, especially after any announced system update.

Build in a buffer for the unavailability scenario. Paragraph 16(iii) exists because the drafters anticipated the system going down. If it's unavailable, the court issues directions on the alternative mode of filing rather than filing being suspended outright. Don't assume a portal outage on a filing deadline day is automatically an extension. Check for directions rather than waiting.

Formatting discipline still does the heavy lifting

None of this changes because the delivery method is electronic rather than physical. The advocate is still responsible for getting the typing format, margins, page numbering, and, where applicable, every-tenth-line numbering right before the document goes anywhere. E-filing just means that a formatting mistake shows up as a system rejection rather than a registry clerk flagging it over the counter, which can feel more impersonal but isn't any more forgiving.

Preparing the document correctly before it reaches the portal, rather than relying on the system to catch problems, is the more reliable approach. Tenthliner applies every-tenth-line numbering and other formatting requirements to a finished PDF before it's uploaded, so the document meets the applicable practice direction the first time it's submitted through e-filing.

For the fundamentals of tenthlining itself, see What Is Tenthlining and Why Kenyan Courts Require It.