Fred Ngatia Biography: Senior Counsel Fredrick Ngatia has been involved in several groundbreaking cases at the Supreme Court, represented big companies, high-profile individuals and was the lead counsel for former President Uhuru Kenyatta in the presidential election petition of 2013 and twice in 2017.
The 66-year-old senior counsel has two Masters degrees and about 43 years of experience in the legal profession.
He was ranked the top lawyer in dispute resolution by the Global Chambers in 2019 and is remembered for arguing the case that resulted in the abolition of the mandatory death sentence.
Ngatia was admitted to the bar in 1980, a year after he graduated with a Bachelor of Law from the University of Nairobi.
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Later on, he obtained his first Master of Law degree from the London School of Economics in 1984, during which he researched the boundary dispute between Kenya and Sudan, which culminated in the changing of the boundaries between the two countries to the current state.
Ngatia started his career as a State Counsel at the Attorney General’s office in 1980 but resigned after seven years to start practising private law.
He was a partner at Kagia and Ngatia Advocates but broke away in 1996 to start Ngatia and Associates, a firm where he is the sole proprietor to date.
In 2015, Ngatia was appointed by former CJ Mutunga to help condemned prisoners serving death sentence and successfully argued the case which has seen more than 5,000 prisoners apply for re-sentencing after the court declared mandatory death sentence as unconstitutional.
His other outstanding case was in 2019 when he successfully argued on behalf of the Council of Governors over the dispute regarding the division of revenue.