How Law Firm Secretaries Can Speed Up Pleading Preparation

Secretaries in Kenyan law firms carry more of the pleading preparation workload than the job title suggests. Advocates draft the substance, but secretaries are usually the ones typing, formatting, assembling, and getting a document ready to file, often against a filing deadline that doesn't move. Speeding this up without cutting corners on accuracy comes down to a handful of habits.

Keep templates current, not just convenient

The biggest time sink isn't typing, it's fixing formatting that was wrong from the start because it was copied from an old template. A template saved years ago carries whatever formatting was current then, and court practice directions do get revised. Keep one verified, current template per court, per document type, rather than reusing whichever file happens to be open from the last similar matter. A few minutes spent confirming a template against the current practice direction saves far more time than it costs, because it removes an entire category of rework later.

Separate drafting from formatting

Trying to format a pleading correctly while it's still being edited for content wastes effort, because formatting applied to a paragraph that later gets cut or moved has to be redone. Let the advocate finish the substance first. Once the wording is final, do the formatting pass in one focused sitting: margins, spacing, case heading, page numbering. This single change, doing formatting once at the end instead of continuously throughout drafting, is one of the simplest ways to cut preparation time.

Know which court's rule applies before you start

Reformatting a document because it was prepared against the wrong court's standard is entirely avoidable time loss. Confirm the destination court before typing begins, not after.

• Supreme Court: Times New Roman, size 12, double-spaced, margins of 3.0cm left, 2.0cm top and bottom, 1.5cm right (Paragraph 12), pages numbered top-right (Paragraph 11).
• Court of Appeal: 1.5 spacing, minimum 12-point font (Paragraph 5(a)), pages numbered top-right (Paragraph 1(d)).
• High Court: Times New Roman, Arial, or Century Gothic at size 12, fully justified, 1.5 spacing, margins of 1.5" top and bottom and 1.75" left (Paragraph 9), pages numbered bottom-right, annexures numbered separately top-right (Paragraph 11).

Build a short pre-filing checklist and actually use it

A one-page checklist, kept next to the workstation, catches the small errors that cost the most time when they're caught late, at the registry counter, instead of early, at the desk. Court, document type, heading format, page numbering corner, and whether every-tenth-line numbering applies for that court and document. Our full pre-filing checklist is written for exactly this use.

Understand when tenthlining actually applies

This is worth getting right because it's the formatting step most often either forgotten or applied where it isn't needed, and both cost time.

• Supreme Court: required on all documents (Paragraph 11).
• Court of Appeal: required generally, and specifically on applications and affidavits (Paragraphs 1(e) and 3(a)).
• High Court: not required for ordinary pleadings, but required for Records of Appeal in civil appeals (Paragraph 14(iii)).

Manually counting and marking every tenth line by hand is slow and easy to get wrong, particularly on a document that gets edited after the numbering was added, which then has to be redone from scratch.

Automate the formatting step that's most repetitive

Typing, drafting, and proofreading need a person's judgment. Applying consistent, court-matched page and line numbering to a finished document doesn't, and it's exactly the kind of repetitive task that's slow by hand and easy to automate. Tenthliner takes a finished PDF and applies the correct numbering for the destination court using a preset matched to that court's rule, turning what can be a slow, error-prone manual pass into a quick final step once the document is otherwise ready. For firms preparing similar filings often, that's real time back, without touching the accuracy of the numbering itself.

Keep a record of what's been sent for filing

Once a document is finalized and formatted, keep a dated copy, ideally the exact PDF that was filed, so if a registry query comes back weeks later, there's no need to reconstruct which version was actually submitted. This is a small habit, but it prevents a much bigger time cost down the line.

None of this requires new software skills or a change in how the firm drafts. It's mostly about doing formatting once, at the right point in the process, against the right standard, and automating the one step that's purely mechanical. See What Is Tenthlining? for background on why courts require this specific formatting in the first place, and Why Kenyan Courts Reject Improperly Formatted Pleadings for what happens when these steps get skipped.