Cost comes before the question
You have to commit to an advocate's fee before you know whether you even have a case. For a tenancy dispute or an unpaid wage, the cost of asking can exceed the amount in dispute.
A McDorcis product
JuaHaki AI
Know your rights, on WhatsApp.
Jua Haki means “know your rights” in Swahili. It is a legal assistant that lives entirely inside WhatsApp: ask a question in English or Swahili, get an answer grounded in Kenyan law, generate the document you need, and reach a licensed advocate when the matter calls for one.
KSh 50
Or nothing at all — the first three questions each month are free. Unlimited access is KSh 300 a month; KSh 500 adds consultations with a licensed advocate.
Paid with M-Pesa, inside the chat
The problem
Knowing the law and being able to use it are different things
Kenyan law is public. Every Act is online. But between a person with a problem and the law that covers it sit a series of obstacles that have nothing to do with the law itself — and each one is enough on its own to stop somebody acting.
The law is public but unreadable
The Constitution, the Employment Act, and the Rent Restriction Act are all freely available. That is not the same as being usable by someone who needs an answer this afternoon.
Help is where the lawyers are
Legal services concentrate in a few urban centres. Distance alone rules out a consultation for a great many people with a genuine problem.
English-only advice excludes people
Legal material is overwhelmingly in English. A person who reasons in Swahili is asked to describe their problem, and understand the answer, in their second language.
You do not know what you are entitled to
The hardest problems are the ones where somebody does not know a right exists. If you do not know the Rent Restriction Act applies to you, you will not ask about it.
The solution
Put the whole thing inside a conversation
The design decision that shapes everything else is the channel. JuaHaki is not an app with a WhatsApp notification bolted on — WhatsApp is the entire product. There is nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and no barrier between having a question and asking it.
Everything else follows from that: answers written to be read on a phone, payment through M-Pesa inside the same conversation, documents delivered as files to the chat, and a handover to an advocate that happens without the user going anywhere else.
How it works
From a question to something you can act on
The question arrives on WhatsApp
No app to download, no account to create, no data bundle beyond what messaging already costs. WhatsApp is the platform with the widest reach in Kenya — over 85% penetration — so the product meets people where they already are.
The answer is grounded in actual law
The question is matched against a curated library of Kenyan legal sources — the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the Employment Act, the Rent Restriction Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Land Registration Act, and tribunal procedures. The answer is built from what those documents say, not from a model's general impression of the law.
Documents are generated on request
Tenancy agreements, demand letters, and wills are produced from the same conversation and delivered as files. Most people needing a demand letter do not need an advocate to write it; they need one to exist.
A person takes over when a person is needed
Matters that require judgement are escalated to a licensed Kenyan advocate, either automatically or when the user asks. The assistant is a first step, not a replacement for representation.
What it changes
What is different because it exists
Asking costs almost nothing
Three questions a month are free. Beyond that a question is KSh 50, or KSh 200 for ten. Unlimited access is KSh 300 a month, and KSh 500 adds advocate consultations. The point is that finding out where you stand is no longer the expensive part.
It answers in the language you think in
English or Swahili, in the same conversation. People describe their problem naturally instead of translating it first.
Advocates get better-prepared clients
By the time a matter reaches an advocate, the facts have been gathered and the relevant law identified. Less of the first consultation is spent establishing what happened.
Organisations can extend it to their people
A multi-tenant portal lets employers, unions, and associations buy shared credits, apply their own branding, and make legal support available to their members.
Where the limits are
A legal product has to know what it is not
Getting this wrong is not a bug, it is a liability — for the user and for us. Three constraints shaped the build more than any feature did.
Legal information, not legal advice
Giving legal advice in Kenya requires an advocate's licence. JuaHaki provides information, carries a disclaimer on every response, and escalates anything that needs an advocate. That boundary is designed into the product rather than written into terms nobody reads.
Built to the Data Protection Act 2019
Consent is collected explicitly during WhatsApp onboarding. Users can export or delete their data, only necessary data is collected, and every access is logged. People discussing a legal problem are handing over sensitive information, and the system is built on that assumption.
The model is not left to improvise
Answers are assembled from retrieved legal sources rather than generated freely. If the AI service fails repeatedly, the system falls back to returning the underlying legal text instead of guessing — a wrong answer about your rights is worse than no answer.
What it runs on
Built and maintained by McDorcis
Channel
WhatsApp via Meta Cloud API v21
API
NestJS 11, TypeORM, PostgreSQL 17 + pgvector
AI
Anthropic Claude, Voyage AI embeddings, hybrid RAG search
Queue & cache
Redis 7 + BullMQ
Payments
M-Pesa Daraja API (STK Push, B2C)
Documents
Puppeteer and docx, stored on S3-compatible storage
Web portals
Next.js 16 — admin, advocate, and organisation
Security
JWT, bcrypt, Helmet, ClamAV malware scanning
FAQ
Common questions
What is JuaHaki AI?
A legal assistant that runs entirely on WhatsApp. Kenyans ask legal questions in English or Swahili and get answers grounded in Kenyan law, can generate documents such as tenancy agreements and demand letters, and can be handed over to a licensed advocate when a matter needs one. It is a McDorcis product.
Is this legal advice?
No. Giving legal advice in Kenya requires an advocate's licence. JuaHaki provides legal information — what the law says and how it applies in general — with a disclaimer on every response. Anything needing judgement on your specific circumstances is escalated to a licensed advocate.
What does it cost?
The first three questions each month are free. After that a question costs KSh 50, or KSh 200 for a pack of ten. Unlimited questions are KSh 300 a month, and KSh 500 a month adds consultations with a licensed advocate. Payment is by M-Pesa inside the chat.
Which languages does it work in?
English and Swahili, in the same conversation. You can describe the problem in whichever you think in, and the answer comes back in the same language.
How does it know Kenyan law?
Answers are built from a curated library of Kenyan legal sources, including the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the Employment Act, the Rent Restriction Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Land Registration Act, and tribunal procedures. The assistant retrieves the relevant passages and answers from them rather than from general knowledge.
What happens to my data?
JuaHaki is built to the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019. Consent is collected explicitly when you start, only necessary data is collected, every access is logged, and you can export or delete your data at any time.
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JuaHaki is what happens when specialist knowledge is put somewhere people already are, at a price they can actually pay. The same pattern applies well beyond law.
