In Kenya, human rights violations have a marked impact on the health of people living with HIV. Integrating legal literacy and legal services into healthcare appears to be an effective strategy to empower vulnerable groups and address underlying determinants of health. Legal empowerment programmes have the potential to promote accountability, reduce stigma and discrimination and contribute to altering unjust structures and systems. Given their apparent value as a health and human rights intervention, particularly for marginalized populations, further rigorous evaluations are called for to support the scale-up of such programmes.