High Court Practice Directions 2022 for Litigation Clerks

Ask a litigation clerk what "the High Court practice directions" require, and you'll usually get a confident answer that turns out to be half right. The Practice Directions to Standardize Practice and Procedures in the High Court, dated 11 January 2022 and issued under Gazette Notice 189 of 2022 by Chief Justice Martha K. Koome, cover 43 paragraphs of court procedure, from cause lists to virtual hearings. Only a handful of those paragraphs deal with document formatting, and they don't all say the same thing. Getting the distinction right matters more than most clerks realize, because the tenthlining requirement in this particular document is narrower than in the Supreme Court's and Court of Appeal's directions, and applying it in the wrong place is its own kind of formatting error.

What this document actually is

Unlike the Supreme Court Practice Directions, 2020, which apply only to matters before the Supreme Court, or the Court of Appeal's 2015 directions, which apply to civil appeals and applications at that court, the High Court's 2022 directions apply across the High Court's general civil and criminal jurisdiction. That breadth is exactly why the formatting rules inside it are split across several paragraphs rather than stated once: pleadings, records of appeal, and witness bundles each get their own treatment.

For a litigation clerk, that means "check the High Court practice directions" isn't one lookup. It's at least three, depending on what document is being prepared.

Paragraph 9: general typing format

Paragraph 9 sets the baseline typing standard for documents filed in the High Court:

• A4 paper
• Margins of 1.5 inches on the top and bottom, 1.75 inches on the left
• Font: Times New Roman, Arial, or Century Gothic
• Font size 12, in black
• Full justification
• 1.5 line spacing

Notice what's absent compared to the Supreme Court's Paragraph 12: no right-hand margin measurement is specified, and there's no font-size instruction beyond "12." If you're setting up a house style for a firm that files in both courts, the High Court's left margin (1.75") is wider than the Supreme Court's (3.0cm, roughly 1.18"), so a single template built for the stricter court won't automatically satisfy the other. Check both before assuming one style works everywhere.

Paragraph 10: case heading format

Paragraph 10 doesn't prescribe a specific heading layout. Instead, it requires that the case heading "follow the format set out in the Judiciary's electronic filing system." In practice, this means the e-filing portal itself is the authority on heading format, not a static template in the practice directions. If your firm's precedent bank has a High Court heading style that predates a portal update, it's worth checking against the current e-filing interface rather than trusting an old document as the reference.

Paragraph 11: drawing of pleadings

This is where clerks most often assume tenthlining applies, and it's the paragraph that actually doesn't mention it. Paragraph 11 requires:

• Pages numbered at the bottom right-hand corner
• Annexures numbered at the top right-hand corner

That's it. No every-tenth-line requirement appears in this paragraph, even though it's the paragraph most directly about how pleadings should be drawn and numbered. This is a genuine, verifiable difference from the Supreme Court's Paragraph 11, which requires every tenth line to be numbered in the right-hand margin for all documents before that court, and from the Court of Appeal's 2015 directions, which impose the same every-tenth-line requirement on documents and on applications and affidavits under paragraphs 1(e) and 3(a).

If you tenthline a straightforward plaint, defence, or affidavit filed only at the High Court under these 2022 directions, you're not violating anything by doing it, but you're also not required to by this specific paragraph. Page numbering at the bottom right and annexure numbering at the top right are the actual requirements for ordinary pleadings.

Paragraph 14: where tenthlining does apply

The every-tenth-line requirement shows up under Paragraph 14, "Record of Appeal for Civil Appeals," not under the general pleadings paragraph. Paragraph 14 sets out what a Record of Appeal must contain (index, copy of pleadings, certified typed record of the trial court proceedings, judgment and sentence, list of exhibits, list of witnesses) and then adds two formatting rules specific to that record:

• The record shall be numbered in the bottom right-hand corner.
• Every tenth line of every document shall be numbered in the right-hand margin.

So the tenthlining rule in the 2022 High Court directions is real; it's just scoped to Records of Appeal for civil appeals, not to every pleading filed at the High Court. Paragraph 14 also requires binding: where the pleadings run to more than 500 pages, the record must be split into separate volumes of 500 pages or fewer, each with its own index.

Paragraph 15, "Record of Criminal Appeal," lists its own contents requirement (drawing on the Criminal Procedure Code) and a page-count binding threshold of 100 pages, but does not repeat the every-tenth-line instruction in the same explicit terms as Paragraph 14. If you're preparing a criminal Record of Appeal and want to apply the civil standard for consistency, that's a reasonable practice choice, but it isn't itself mandated by this specific document. When in doubt, confirm with the registry handling the appeal.

A quick reference for litigation clerks

Why this distinction is worth getting right

Formatting requirements exist so that judges, opposing counsel, and registries can navigate a document quickly, particularly when referring to a specific line during submissions or a ruling. Applying tenthlining where it isn't required doesn't break anything, but treating it as universal across all three courts (Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and High Court) means missing the one place in the High Court's own directions where it's explicitly mandatory: the Record of Appeal. A clerk who skips Paragraph 14 because "the High Court directions don't require tenthlining" (true for ordinary pleadings, false for records of appeal) risks a rejected or flagged record at exactly the stage, appeal preparation, where a rejection is most costly to fix under time pressure.

The practical workflow: draft pleadings to Paragraph 9's typing format and Paragraph 11's page-numbering rule using your word processor, convert to PDF, and only apply every-tenth-line margin numbers when you're assembling a Record of Appeal under Paragraph 14. Tenthliner applies the every-tenth-line numbering to an existing PDF without altering your typed content, which makes it straightforward to add that layer only at the record-of-appeal stage rather than building it into every pleading template by default.

The source

This article is based on a direct reading of "Practice Directions to Standardize Practice and Procedures in the High Court," Gazette Notice 189 of 2022, signed 11 January 2022 by Chief Justice Martha K. Koome. If your firm's template or training materials say otherwise, it's worth checking the current version on the Judiciary's own site rather than relying on a secondhand summary, since even search engines have been known to misstate its margin and numbering requirements.

For a broader introduction to tenthlining and why Kenyan courts use it at all, see What Is Tenthlining and Why Kenyan Courts Require It.