Power Point: Women in New Zealand lead the judiciary, head the litigation teams at two of New Zealand’s biggest firms and make up most of the profession. But former Law Society President Jacque Lethbridge says the room in a major commercial case still looks remarkably male. She explains why that is and how to fix it.
When LawFuel argued last week that every large firm should publish three numbers a year (women’s share of full equity, the partner pay gap, and who leads the biggest matters), we braced for the profession’s usual response and there was a dignified silence.
Instead, one of Auckland’s more seasoned commercial litigators wrote in to agree, correct the data, and tell us to go further.
However former Law Society president Jacque Lethbridge, who heads the dispute resolution team at Martelli McKegg, wrote to agree with the suggestion and also explained how the profession should go further.
Jacque Lethbridge has been the first woman partner at two law firms, and was also President of the New Zealand Law Society in 2022. Her verdict on the profession is that there is real progress, but it has stalled in one very specific place.
“I am often still the only woman in the room in large scale commercial litigation cases,” she told LawFuel, “other than now the judges.”
The denominator problem
Lethbridge says the Auckland Women Lawyers’ Association survey, which she support, counts women full-equity partners as a share of all partners, rather than as a share of the equity partnership.
Measured against all partners, a firm with a big salaried tier looks worse on ownership even where women hold most of the equity.
At Martelli McKegg, she says, women are a majority of the equity partners, but the AWLA method would not show it.
“I think its important to encourage the AWLA survey and also acknowledge the “gateway” effect of being made a salaried partner to start with – I have seen first-hand how this has shifted the dial for women.”
We have previously reported on surveys of ‘female friendly’ law firms that offering salaried ‘partner’ positions is a nice title (depending upon the firm, obviously) but ‘equity’ is ownership and any survey blurring those two is just measuring business cards.
“I actually think the ability to make partners up as salaried partners has helped shift the dial, particularly for women,” says Jacqui Lethbridge. ” But getting more women through to equity ownership should remain a focus, she says.
“Salaried partnership can act as a helpful gateway into partnership that removes barriers like obsessive focus on a business case to initially be made a partner. The reality is that with the partner title it then becomes much easier to build your own client base which feeds into the business case for equity partnership.”
The 2026 ALPMA/Fluid Legal Recruitment survey puts women at 54% of salaried partners but 40% of equity partners in participating New Zealand firms, a split ALPMA describes as largely flat for two years.
Law Society figures for June 2026 put women at 57.5% of lawyers but 43% of partners and directors. Its Gender Equality Charter summary report found women’s share of equity partnerships at signatory firms still below 40%.
Firms control their own courtrooms
Lethbridge’s second point is one that diversity reports tend to skip, which is law firms’ role in the briefing system where they run their own litigation and decide, internally, who leads that work.
In her team, she says, a significant share of the litigation is led by women, partly because another woman partner leads the family law team and partly because of the number of women in the team. She also says that when her people appear in the senior courts, including as second chair, they get a speaking role.
She refers to two Court of Appeal matters recently show what that looks like. In one, a woman from her team led the appeal with a male second chair. In the other, the woman was second chair but argued part of the appeal, alongside a male barrister acting as senior counsel who had reverse briefed the firm.
Nor is she an outlier at the top of litigation practices. Kirsten Massey (pictured) heads Russell McVeagh’s litigation practice and was named New Zealand Lawyer of the Year at the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific 2026 awards.
Sophie East heads Bell Gully’s litigation and dispute resolution practice.
Nina Blomfield is Simpson Grierson’s head of litigation, and litigation partner Jania Baigent becomes that firm’s Chair in January 2027.
Lethbridge calls the change since she made partner at Grove Darlow in 2012 “enormous”.
The bench moved, but not the bar
The contrast with the judiciary is hard to miss. Chief Justice Dame Helen Winkelmann heads the judiciary, Justice Christine French has been President of the Court of Appeal since November 2024., Justice Sally Fitzgerald succeeded Justice Susan Thomas as Chief High Court Judge in December 2023.
Women now lead the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court.
Counsel, however, have not kept pace. The New Zealand Bar Association’s gender ratio report, released in March 2025 and covering 2012 to 2023, found women were 30% of lead counsel in the Court of Appeal and 26% in the Supreme Court over the latest four years. The Association found no improvement on its earlier reviews.
Remove Crown Law, which adopted an equitable briefing policy in 2009, and those figures fall to 22% and 16%.
Strip out the Crown and what remains is largely the private market, which is commercial clients, instructing solicitors and senior barristers deciding who appears. In the country’s highest court, that market produces a woman at the lectern roughly one case in six.
Lethbridge is careful with her diagnosis. “I cannot help but think gender bias in instruction must be an issue,” she says.
She is equally careful to say she cannot point to it in her own practice. Her work comes from direct client instructions, reverse briefs from barristers, referrals from her own partners and conflict work from other firms.
The Law Society’s 2025 Gender Equality Charter supplementary report found only 37% of signatories had adopted the voluntary target of sending women half of external instructions. Only around a third of those briefing externally were tracking the numbers.
It is a target nobody adopts, measured by almost nobody, and which will tend to produce the results the Bar Association keeps finding.
The fix
“The more avenues we provide for women undertaking significant commercial litigation to be profiled must help in shifting that dial further,” she says.
Her suggestion is for a discrete annual power list of senior women lawyers, particularly those doing top-tier commercial litigation.
LawFuel is happy to consider publishing such a list of women in commercial litigation. There are already a growing number of leading women lawyers at the bar, such as Sarah Armstrong Victoria Casey, Miriam Dean and among the most recent Silk appointments, Janette Campbell and Polly Pope (pictured).
A meaningful list of female commercial litigators however will measure what directory rankings and firm biographies mostly do not, being lead counsel appearances in the senior courts, their leadership of significant commercial matters, and direct client instructions.
Jacque Lethbridge supports the Law Society’s Gender Equality Charter and AWLA’s work in keeping the numbers in public view. “We need to work constructively to keep things moving forward in an upwards trajectory,” she says.
Although the profession has solved the headcount problem and is working, slowly, on ownership, the next test is the courtroom, and is also the hardest to fudge, because the Bar Association counts who actually stands up.
Clients and instructing solicitors decide who gets it, and right now they are deciding much as they did twelve years ago.
Related on LawFuel: Most NZ Lawyers Are Women, But Most of the Equity Isn’t.
