LawAfrica was founded in 1999 to fill the gap in legal publishing in East Africa. It began when Katarina Juma noticed the difficulty that existed in getting materials of any court rulings. While at the university in the US she was assigned on a project with another Kenyan student who had also experienced the same difficulty. She noticed that it was very easy to get rulings for American courts in computer form, and she thought of creating a business using the same concept.

On coming back to Kenya Katarina teamed up with Maina Waweru and while both were still working at full-time jobs, they started the company that would eventually become LawAfrica. At first the business was subscription based and had problems generating enough revenue because the on-line product was not ready; the website developer could not develop the site on time.

LawAfrica concluded a strategic joint venture partnership with an international publisher, LexisNexis Butterworths, in order to ensure that the markets in which we operate are serviced properly and that there is transfer of skills to LawAfrica. The joint venture's first product was the East Africa Law Reports (EALR) 1995 - 2003.