In Tauranga three legal heavy hitters have decided the talent shortage is painful enough to warrant an actual ceasefire.
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Cooney Lees Morgan, Sharp Tudhope and Holland Beckett have linked arms for the “Redefining Legal” campaign, cooked up with Priority One’s Work Life Tauranga platform. The pitch is simple: stop flogging individual firm brands and start selling the entire Western Bay of Plenty as the place where decent lawyers actually want to live and work.
“Law firms naturally compete,” concedes Campbell Izzard, Partner at Cooney Lees Morgan, “but the challenge of attracting experienced legal talent is bigger than any single firm. By working together we can actually show the depth of work happening here instead of all pretending we’re the only show in town.”
The campaign wisely ditches the usual “come work for us” chest-thumping and instead positions Tauranga’s legal scene as the smart move for anyone after proper files and a life that doesn’t involve soul-crushing commutes.
“The Western Bay of Plenty offers lawyers the opportunity to work on significant matters while enjoying a quality of life that is hard to match,” says Danielle Brownlie, People and Culture Manager at Holland Beckett. Translation: you can do serious work and still get to the beach before happy hour.
The move is a blunt admission of what every managing partner knows but hates saying out loud: the national pool of experienced lawyers is tiny, demand is rising, and poaching the same ten candidates has become exhausting. Collective action, it turns out, beats another round of bidding wars.
Local lawyers here already handle the full spectrum — infrastructure, agribusiness, logistics, property, tech, exports — the sort of complex commercial, regulatory and investment work that actually moves the regional economy.
“Tauranga’s economy is evolving quickly, and the legal work here reflects that,” adds Grant Davidson, HR Manager at Sharp Tudhope. “It’s an exciting place to build a career — if you can get the right people to notice.”
Work Life Tauranga project manager Meg Davis cuts through the spin: “The legal sector campaign is about positioning Tauranga as a serious professional destination. Talented people want meaningful work and a life. We’ve just brought the employers together so we can tell a bigger, better story instead of three separate ones.”
The numbers back it: landing high-calibre professionals pours serious value into regional economies through investment, deals and the professional ecosystem that keeps the wheels turning.
The Redefining Legal push is already live with targeted national and international marketing aimed squarely at lawyers whose skills match what the Bay needs — complex work plus the lifestyle most Auckland and Wellington firms can only promise in their brochures.
And while the spotlight is on law right now, Priority One is quietly hoping other sectors take notes. Because when even the lawyers are prepared to share the sandbox, you know the talent crunch is real.
