Q&A | Charles K. Muhumuza | Commercial

[music] I’m called Charles Muma a lawyer based in Uganda and working with Muma she’s advocates and legal consultants we are a firm based in Kala specifically inov area and we’re a firm that has seven offices around the country. My role really is to oversee the day-to-day operations of the farm activities and overseeing the team leads whom I manage the office with and also participate in the planning and execution of all the quarterly and annual goals that are set by the office. So I oversee this role in

hand in hand with of course the team that I work with [clears throat] and also I do legal work as well. I do participate in a number of things within the firm concerning delivering services to the clients like any other lawyer in the firm. most of my areas of specialization are really three broad areas which are landlaw and under landlaw I really deal with the aspects of real estate helping people close transactions in either purchasing or disposing of their their assets. Then we also deal with advisory because you

will have those who are coming in and need to be guided on the processes of the landlord around the country when they are doing their acquisitions. So I also play that role and actually that’s the biggest role that I play at the firm because when it comes to the actual nitty-g gritties then there are other lawyers who handle the bits of the nitty-g gritties concerning the land land processes. The other area that I’m engaged in is corporate law. I’m a corporate lawyer. I largely do business

advisory and to the to to the clients, engaging them and educating them about their legal rights guiding them on regulations that they need to follow and enable them to be within the law as far as compliance is concerned. Of course we also do a lot of drafting because all this why we are doing all this corporate work there’s a lot of drafting involved that you have to get involved in. Of course and also the corporate law we also deal in mergers and acquisitions for clients who

come in who are interested in [clears throat] acquiring your assets. So that one also play falls really under corporate law. And then of course under compliance we also guide them on risk management as far as the work they are involved in the clients because we were able to assess and tell them whether something is worth pursuing or not and what are the risks involved in as far as the transaction they are trying to get involved in. Then the final bit in as far as my area of

specialization is banking and finance because we do a lot of work with a number of banks in Uganda. Some of their work involves perfection of the securities that they avail to the firm to protect the the bank’s interests when people are borrowing money from the banks. We also are involved in advisory again still in this area because many times there are complex issues that come in come up and you are required to render and advice on how a transaction can best be smoothly carried out and

cater for both parties interests. for so that the transaction can be concluded. And of course, while all this is being done, we’re also doing a lot of drafting and preparing a lot of documentation. Besides this area of the three areas of my specialization, like I’ve mentioned earlier, we are a wider and bigger law firm that deals with a number of things.

So you find that there are other lawyers who are involved in litigation. I don’t go I no longer go to court, but we have a team that does a lot of litigation within the office. We also have a team that is involved in arbitration work.

The work that mainly doesn’t end up in the litigation area as far as we are even if that’s the the nature of the case that is before the firm. Then we also have family law is also an area that we we have grown as a firm whereby we help members in terms of managing their estates, divorce work and other aspects that involve family related activities. Then finally we also do a bit of project work but usually this one is mainly when a client comes in and

they want to get involved in a specific project and they take us on to to advise and and participate directly. This has mainly been in the areas of oil and gas where we we we do a lot of project work for a number of the new entities because Uganda is one of those countries that has recently tried to go into the oil and gas area. So we find that most of it is really project related work and as a farm we get into it. I think those are

the areas I would say that the farm and myself in particular I participate in broadly like I’d mentioned earlier one of the unique features of our office is that we are the largest we are the only firm with the largest footprint in the country by this I mean that we have four seven offices spread around the country where in each of those offices they are certified and approved by the law council and we have a team on ground in those seven areas. So one of the

things that distinguishes us from the rest of the other service providers in the legal sector is that for any one point if a client wants to utilize any of those offices and you have a matter let’s say you’re based in Campala and you want someone to help you with the matter in city you will get the same service that you would ordinarily get in Campala at the same time having a saving in terms of transport and having to get a new lawyer or law firm in that that

particular area. So that is one of the key distinguishing factors as far as a firmware we are concerned whereby we are able to deliver the service in a timely manner in a particular area that a client might not necessarily be able to access especially if they are dealing with an emergency because u you will find that sometimes a client has a matter that has come up so abruptly you cannot travel there. It will take about 6 hours to reach that particular destination. So it just takes a call

from us to get our lawyers on the ground to get involved and assist that client at that moment and is something I can say that no law firm has been able to achieve in the country. The other aspect that that makes us unique in a way is that we have made it particularly imperative among our team that u people need to be client centric. You must have the client’s interest at hand first and foremost when you’re dealing with the activities because if a client is

satisfied, you are sure that you will have that same client come back tomorrow or even make a referral for you. So this is at the heart of of the activities that our team does and of course all this is guided by the farm values which are teamwork, innovation and integrity.

So if you can combine the three of them and are excellent in those three areas definitely you’ll end up serving the client at the best and at the at the heart of what needs to be done for them.

Then of course the final one is that we have a dedicated staff. Most of the staff have been here with us for quite some time. I think we [clears throat] have one of the lowest attrition rates in terms of teams living and I think that speaks volumes about how we treat our teams and also how much they love what they are doing. So I think that really puts us ahead of most of the teams that we compete with in the field here.

We mainly deal like I’ve said we deal with corporate clients mainly the companies because you you find that they are the ones who are able to to who have the the most needs concerning the network of work we do whereby they they have different interests around the country. So you find that we are largely with the corporate ent the corporate companies and then also we have the the banks that also we deal with we deal with them and most of the typical cases involve advisory

whereby they they need to be guided on compliance and some of course you find that they have transactions they are trying to close and we come in as lawyers. Then of course the final one is the litigation bit especially the banks whereby they are trying to make a follow up for example on debt collection and and trying to recover. So you find that we are in those three those two main two broad areas and of course we do welcome individuals to come in and also

engage with us though the individuals are fewer than because more most of the time the farm is perceived as a corporate farmer that’s all I can say about that the most recent and biggest has been the our role in the oil and gas industry which has which was more of a first because we were the only firm that was engaged in during the process of the acquisition of the land where the projects are involved. the oil and gas projects are involved and our role

was mainly to help with acquiring lawfully the land from the people who are living in those places for purposes of the the clients to be able to carry out their oil and gas activities. And this was a large scale exercise that involved almost about 6,000 households.

And we had to have a one- on-one engagement with each of these affected persons. And at that at one point we had up to about 30 lawyers in the field doing this exercise. And I must say that was successfully carried out and the land was fully acquired. And I believe the oil should start flowing hopefully next year because the exercise has been ongoing. There has been a lot of activities going on in that area. We also had the privilege also working on the largest underground heated

underground heated pipeline which goes all the way up to Tanzania, our neighboring country. And we were involved in aspects of also the acquisition process where we are required to engage and make sure that the clients the the affected persons their rights are protected and their entitlements are acquired lawfully and this will also acquire I did it really very very well and at least there have been no complaints or any challenges in as far as this exercise was concerned.

One of the key reasons we we decided to partner and join the global law experts was really to use it as to have a forum for networking with other lawyers around the world because I’m aware that it’s a global institution that brings together different lawyers with different interests. So for us we are looking at it as an avenue to network and meet useful and helpful friends who will give us also a leg up in areas that might not be familiar we might not be familiar with and also we believe that

in that through that network will also be impactful on their side whereby they will get to learn more about what goes on here in Uganda as a country and of course as in our legosphere. We also looked at it has an avenue to learn some of the best practices in these law firms because I know that most of the members who are on this forum are some of the best in their areas. So we believe that through this networking we should be able to get some of the best

practices that we can replicate here and get better. And finally of course is to generate business needs for ourselves and also for them because I believe this being now a global village we should be able to work together and see how we can better each other in our areas of work.

Those are the really the broad areas why we are really looking at training the global experts. Thank you.