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

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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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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

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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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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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Maria Dew KC

New Zealand Law News, Power Law /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 6 Maria Dew completed her two-year term as NZ Bar Association president in 2024, but her influence only sharpened. She’s the profession’s trusted investigator-in-chief – the Royal Australasian College of Physicians review (2025, critical of examination processes), the Hamilton Crown Solicitor workplace conduct probe, historic Labour Party abuse allegations, the

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Davey Salmon KC

New Zealand Law News, Power Law, Power List /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 14 Salmon’s 2025 profile case was the Talleys v. TVNZ defamation battle (September 2025), resulting in a win with a dismissal of the claim. His practice is astonishingly diverse: representing the Independent Māori Statutory Board against Auckland Council (judicial review over Watercare chairmanship), Northland kaumatua Mike Smith in climate change

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Chris Finlayson KC

New Zealand Law News, New Zealand Law News, Power Law /

LawFuel Power List 2025 No. 15 The former Attorney-General (2008-2016) remains New Zealand’s pre-eminent Treaty of Waitangi and constitutional lawyer. His 2025 work included leading Hawke’s Bay councils’ negotiations with government over Cyclone Gabrielle recovery and representing former Labour ministers called before the Covid Royal Commission (they refused attendance; Finlayson provided cover). His memoir, Yes,

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