New Zealand Law News

Scott Russell Named 2025 NZ Lawyer of the Year After $100M Banking Class Action Victory

LawStars, New Zealand Law News /

The Class Action That Redrew Banking’s Rules When a relatively unknown litigator forces two of the country’s most powerful banks into a nine-figure reckoning, you don’t call it luck. You call it LawFuel’s 2025 Lawyer of the Year. Scott Russell of Russell van Hout has been named LawFuel’s 2025 New Zealand Lawyer of the Year, […]

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LawFuel Power List 2025: New Zealand’s Most Influential Lawyers

Law Firms, Lawyers, New Zealand Law News, Power Law Firms - New Zealand /
LawFuel 2025 Power List

NZ Law’s Power Lawyer List 2025 By John Bowie, LawFuel Publisher | The 2025 LawFuel Power List delivers its usual cocktail of institutional heavyweights, courtroom titans, regulatory shock troops, and a few strategists whose influence is quiet but devastatingly real. It’s opinionated, occasionally provocative, and guaranteed to irritate at least some of the people who

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Scott Russell

New Zealand Law News /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 11 Russell secured a $135.6 million ASB settlement in October 2025, one of New Zealand’s largest banking payouts without a liability admission, after four years of class action litigation over Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act disclosure breaches. The ANZ case continues. That’s plaintiff-side power: making banks sweat, resisting retrospective

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Karen Chang

New Zealand Law News /

LawFuel Power List No. 7 Chang moves up three spots because the SFO under her leadership stopped resembling a bureaucratic afterthought and started resembling a threat. Foreign-bribery whistleblower platforms, Ponzi plea deals, sustained prosecutions of corporate fraud—2025 saw the SFO prosecuting with a swagger that’s been absent for years. The Court of Appeal’s criticism in

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Ron Mansfield KC

New Zealand Law News, Power Law /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 8 LawFuel’s 2024 Lawyer of the Year, Ron Mansfield’s defence of eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne in the 2024 murder trial was New Zealand’s highest-profile criminal case in a generation—eight weeks of wall-to-wall media coverage, a jury note revealing “most people don’t think there’s enough evidence to support suicide” but acquitting

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Michelle Redington

New Zealand Law News, Power Law /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 9 Redington oversees one of New Zealand’s largest legal teams (70+ lawyers) and the IRD’s digital transformation—one of the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest government IT projects. That’s not glamorous work, but it’s power: tax revenue ($116 billion annually) funds everything from hospitals to highways, and Redington’s team interprets the Inland Revenue

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Troy Pilkington

New Zealand Law News /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 10 Pilkington rode the Commerce Act reform wave straight into the Power List. As Russell McVeagh’s competition practice leader, he’s authored extensive commentary on the biggest regulatory overhaul in 20+ years: merger control tightening, predatory pricing tests, call-in powers for “creeping acquisitions.” Boardrooms across New Zealand now need competition clearance

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Phil Newland

LawPreneur, New Zealand Law News /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 18 Phil Newland originated and grew litigation funding in New Zealand with the establishment of his LPF Group in 2009, most recently co-funding the landmark ASB/ANZ banking class action, in which more than 150,000 customers alleged disclosure breaches nder the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. The ASB settled for

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Torrin Crowther

New Zealand Law News, Power List /

LawFuel Power List No. 12 Crowther fronts Bell Gully’s Commerce Act coverage, emphasizing “legal certainty” and “proportionate enforcement”—corporate-speak for “don’t let the regulator overreach.” As Chair of Bell Gully’s competition team, he’s published analyses on merger thresholds, cartel leniency, and the Commission’s new commitment powers. His client roster includes major corporates navigating post-reform compliance. The

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John Allen

New Zealand Law News, Power Law /

LawFuel Power Lists 2025 No. 13 Allen’s appointment as Chief Ombudsman (January 2025, taking office March 31) fills Peter Boshier’s activist shoes. His CV is eclectic: commercial litigation at Rudd Watts & Stone, CEO of New Zealand Post, Secretary of Foreign Affairs (MFAT), Chair of NZ Racing Board. Few lawyers have run a $1 billion

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