The process of legal reform in 19th-century Egypt is usually described as one of Westernization and secularization. This paper challenges that narrative and argues, instead, that a better understanding of this process can be achieved by listening to how litigants in police stations and law courts enunciated their presence, how they established their identity, how they verbalized their grievances and how they argued their cases. By relying on evidence drawn from the Egyptian National Archives, the paper argues that the new notions of law, personhood and justice that ushered in legal reform hinge on the new role played by the human voice in courtroom dramas.