What We Do

We build and restructure companies. Our corporate team advises on the formation, financing, governance and sale of businesses in Uganda and in the jurisdictions where our clients choose to hold them, and the commercial team drafts and negotiates the contracts on which those businesses trade.

A growing share of our corporate work is cross-border. We have incorporated holding companies in Delaware for founders raising from American investors, moved group parents from one European jurisdiction to another ahead of a licensing round, converted companies limited by guarantee into share companies, and designed group structures that keep an operating subsidiary in Kampala within a parent that investors and regulators abroad recognise. We advise boards on their duties under the Companies Act, Cap. 106, on members’ rights and on the convening of meetings where a board has lapsed or a company has stalled.

On the transactional side we act for buyers, sellers and investors in private acquisitions, share subscriptions, joint ventures and management buy-outs. We run the due diligence, draft and negotiate the sale and purchase and shareholders’ agreements, obtain the regulatory consents and manage completion. In commercial contracting we prepare the instruments that recur across a business, from master services and supply agreements to distribution, agency, franchise and licensing arrangements, and we maintain template libraries for clients who sign the same contract many times a year.

We advise the institutions that move money and the businesses that borrow it. The practice covers bank and non-bank lending, the licensing and acquisition of financial institutions, payment systems and digital money, insurance, and the land and buildings that stand as security for all of it.

For banks, microfinance institutions and credit providers we handle licence applications, acquisitions of controlling interests and the regulatory approvals that go with them, mergers and portfolio transfers, and the documentation of secured lending from the facility agreement to the legal mortgage and the debenture. We give pre-drawdown and enforceability opinions to lenders and custodians in the form international financiers expect, and we act on enforcement when a facility fails.

Payments and digital finance are the fastest-growing part of this practice. We have obtained and maintained payment service and payment system operator licences under the National Payment Systems Act, registered money services businesses in Canada, passported electronic money and payment institutions across the European Economic Area, and advised on the structure and compliance of remittance corridors into Africa. We draft scheme rules, merchant agreements, agent networks and intragroup data-sharing arrangements, and we advise on stablecoins and other digital assets, from the regulatory perimeter in each jurisdiction to the reserve, custody and redemption terms that a serious issuer needs.

In insurance we advise insurers, brokers and insured businesses on policy wording, regulatory compliance before the Insurance Regulatory Authority, and the handling of claims, including marine cargo, property and liability claims that have been repudiated. In real property we act on acquisitions, leases and development agreements, register and discharge mortgages, and conduct the title investigations on which lenders and purchasers rely.

We help regulated businesses obtain their licences, keep them, and prove to a regulator, an investor or a bank that they deserve them. The practice combines regulatory law with the compliance frameworks that give it effect, and it is led by lawyers who have built those frameworks inside regulated companies before advising on them from outside.

Data protection runs through everything we do. We register data controllers and processors with the Personal Data Protection Office, draft privacy notices, data protection policies, retention schedules and information security policies to the standard of the General Data Protection Regulation, prepare data protection impact assessments and cross-border transfer agreements, and handle complaints and investigations before the Office. Clients operating across several African markets receive one framework drafted to satisfy every regulator they answer to.

In financial crime compliance we design and review anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing programmes, write the risk assessments and customer due diligence procedures that the Financial Intelligence Authority and foreign regulators expect, train boards and compliance officers, and respond to supervisory findings.

Tax is considered in every piece of advice we give. No structure, contract, employment arrangement or transaction leaves the firm without its tax consequences having been worked through, and our tax consultants sit inside the advisory team for that purpose. We conduct tax health checks that find exposure before the Uganda Revenue Authority does, structure groups, employment and contractor arrangements for efficiency, advise on income tax, PAYE, withholding tax, value added tax and transfer pricing, and obtain private rulings where certainty is worth having. When the Authority writes, we handle the matter from the first query to its resolution: responses to information requests and audits, objections to assessments, applications for waivers and payment plans, alternative dispute resolution, and appeals before the Tax Appeals Tribunal and the High Court.

Risk is the discipline that organises the practice. Members of the team are certified risk practitioners, and every instruction the firm takes, whatever the practice area, begins with an assessment of the legal, regulatory, financial and operational risks in play and ends with advice weighted to them. For clients we prepare enterprise risk frameworks and registers, compliance calendars, codes of conduct and supplier codes, and the governance documentation that lenders, development finance institutions and multilateral partners require before they commit funds.

We advise the companies that build, extract and move things. The practice covers construction and engineering, mining and extractives, energy and logistics, and it is led by a dedicated Construction Practice Director working alongside lawyers who have prepared contractual claims exceeding EUR 30 million on projects in Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Our construction work is built on the FIDIC suite. We draft and negotiate contracts under the Red, Yellow, Silver and Emerald Books and the Multilateral Development Bank harmonised edition, prepare and defend extension of time and additional payment claims, advise engineers and employers on determinations, and represent parties before dispute boards and in arbitration. Claims are prepared to the standard of the Society of Construction Law Delay and Disruption Protocol, with the delay analysis, the records and the quantum assembled in the sequence an adjudicator expects to see them.

The firm supports that work with a system of its own. Our construction intelligence platform holds ten years of Ugandan construction input prices, a programme builder that computes the critical path, a clause library across eleven FIDIC forms with every notice period mapped, an evidence desk that turns correspondence into a dated chronology, and a claim builder that assembles the submission in the house form. A contractor with a slipping programme can have its position quantified and its notices drafted before the Engineer's determination is issued.

In mining and extractives we take projects from the initial assessment through exploration and mining licences, environmental and social impact approvals before the National Environment Management Authority, mineral dealer licensing, community agreements and supplier conduct standards, to the sale of production and the disputes that follow when a counterparty fails. We advise on the Mining and Minerals Act, on the fiscal regime and on the local content obligations that apply to operators and their contractors. In energy and logistics we act for developers, transporters and freight businesses on concession, transport and service agreements and on the regulatory approvals each sector requires.

We advise employers on the whole employment relationship and individuals on the matters that shape their personal affairs. The practice is led by the Managing Partner and combines labour law with the tax and social security questions that sit beside it.

For employers we draft contracts of employment, consultancy and contractor agreements, staff handbooks and policies, and we design engagement models that are compliant on tax, on social security and on the Employment Act at the same time. We advise on discipline, termination and redundancy, represent employers before the Labour Office, the Industrial Court and the High Court, and handle the complaints that arise from constructive dismissal, discrimination and unpaid benefits. Where an employer has inherited a problem, such as staff engaged on arrangements the Uganda Revenue Authority will not accept, we quantify the exposure, regularise the position and put a compliant regime in place for the future.

We also advise expatriates and senior executives on their own position: the terms of an offer, the treatment of their National Social Security Fund contributions, work permits and the tax consequences of relocation. Our private client lawyers act on succession planning, wills, estate administration and family trusts, on land and property transactions, and on the disputes about ownership and inheritance that reach the courts.

We protect the names, software and content on which modern businesses are built. For a technology company the intellectual property is often the only asset of real value, and we treat it accordingly from the first commissioning agreement onwards.

We register and defend trade marks in Uganda and through the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation, advise on copyright in software, platforms and creative works, and draft the assignments, licences and confidentiality terms that keep ownership where it belongs when developers, consultants and founders come and go. Our technology contracts cover software development and licensing, platform and application terms of service, white-label and reseller arrangements, and the data-sharing terms that accompany them. In the financial sector that includes the scheme rules and interface agreements that govern access to a payment platform.

On the contentious side we act on infringement, passing off and the unauthorised use of a company’s name or licence by a former insider, and on image rights and privacy complaints arising from the use of a person’s likeness in advertising and social media. We also advise on brand licensing in sponsorship and franchise arrangements and on the intellectual property aspects of an acquisition.

We litigate, arbitrate and settle commercial disputes, and we advise clients on whether a claim is worth bringing before they bring it. Every dispute begins with a written opinion in the firm’s practitioner form that states who can be sued, on what cause of action, for what remedy and by which route, so that the client decides with the position in front of them.

We appear in the Commercial, Civil and Land Divisions of the High Court, in the Magistrates’ Courts and before the Registrar of Companies and other tribunals, and we act in arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act and the rules of the Centre for Arbitration and Dispute Resolution. Our commercial litigation covers debt recovery and summary proceedings, breach of contract, shareholder and director disputes, company meetings and register rectification, insurance claims that have been repudiated, and the enforcement of judgments, decrees and arbitral awards, including the execution of consent judgments inherited from previous counsel. In 2026 we secured a ruling of the Registrar of Companies restraining a lapsed board from making registry filings and referring the members’ constitutional question to the High Court.

We also act for employers in labour disputes, for landowners and purchasers in land matters, and for individuals in civil claims. Where a regulator is the counterparty, whether the Personal Data Protection Office, the Insurance Regulatory Authority or a district local government, we pursue the administrative route first and judicial review where it is warranted. Our demand letters, pleadings and submissions are drafted to one standard: factual pleadings, argument reserved to submissions, every authority verified on the Uganda Legal Information Institute before it is cited.

Some instructions do not fit a practice area: a minority report on a bill before Parliament, a study of the licensing regime across five markets for a multilateral partner, a supplier code that will satisfy a mining company's financiers, or an opinion on whether a product that does not yet exist in Uganda can lawfully be launched here. The research arm takes on those projects.

Its members have prepared legislative analysis in the parliamentary process, built the pricing and claims tools used in our construction practice from a decade of Ugandan cost data, and produced the comparative regulatory studies on which our cross-border fintech advice rests. The arm also publishes the firm's commentary on developments in Ugandan commercial law, from the revised edition of the Laws of Uganda to new regulation in payments, data and mining, and it maintains the verified statutory and case-law references that every practice in the firm cites.

The arm also tracks the economy for clients. It follows the indicators that move a Ugandan business, from construction input prices, fuel and exchange rates to interest rates, tax policy and public investment under Vision 2040, and issues periodic briefings on what those movements mean for pricing, borrowing, hiring and expansion. A client deciding whether to bid, borrow or enter a new market receives the legal answer and the economic context in the same note.