Britomart Chambers has captured its first Judge returning to the Bar with the Hon Justice Geoffrey Venning agreeing to join the Chambers in 2026 after 10 years as a High Court Judge, including five years as Chief High Court Judge.
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The trend for retiring judges to return to practice is one that continues to grow in New Zealand, as it has in other Commonwealth jurisdictions.
Announcement of the Venning membership was made at Britomart’s ‘Spring Soiree’ at the ritzy Hotel Britomart this month (Geoffrey Venning and Michael Heron KC pictured).
The practice for retiring Judges to return to the Bar has grown in recent years with Bankside Chambers having the highest number of returning jurists, including Court of Appeal and High Court alumni who have returned to lend their judicial acumen to commercial, public, and international arbitration-related disputes.
Currently, Lyn Stevens KC, Peter Woodhouse KC, Kit Toogood KC, and retired Associate Judge Warwick Smith are at Bankside working as barristers, arbitrators, and mediators.
Paul Heath KC is also an associate member as well as being a Judge of the Court of First Instance of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Courts, a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Fiji, a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Tonga and Chief Justice of the Pitcairn Islands. In September this year he was appointed to the Singapore Specialist Panel of Arbitrators.
To Return, Or Not?
In New Zealand, the practice of judges returning to the bar has changed over the past thirty to forty years. Traditionally, retiring from the bench marked the end of a judge’s professional legal career, with few venturing back into private practice or legal advocacy.
The landscape has shifted however as the legal community increasingly values the expertise, authority, and insights retired judges bring to mediation, arbitration, and high-stakes legal matters.
Australia has mirrored the development, with retired judges more commonly joining chambers as King’s Counsel, arbitrators, or expert opinion leaders. The tradition faced some resistance, with ethical questions around a judge’s return to the bar, but today such transitions are well-accepted and increasingly routine, especially in fields like arbitration and complex litigation.
In the United Kingdom, returning to chambers after judicial service was long discouraged, upheld by explicit Bar Council rules and professional convention throughout most of the last century.
Only in recent decades have these prohibitions softened, permitting retired judges to participate in arbitration, consultancy, or limited advocacy, although full-fledged courtroom advocacy remains rare.
