New Zealand Law News

NZ Law Society slams Racist Email Conduct by Law Firm Staff as ‘unsatisfactory’

New Zealand Law News /

Two staff members at a New Zealand law firm have been hit with a formal unsatisfactory conduct finding after a Standards Committee concluded their private email exchanges about a colleague crossed the line into racism. LawFuel’s Law Jobs’ Network has New Jobs Daily The exchanges were uncovered by a third party through the firm’s email […]

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Women In Law Firm Leadership: The Stubborn 20% Ceiling That Won’t Crack

Briefings, Featured, Lawyers, Power Law, US Law /
Georgiadawson lawfuel

The legal profession has a mathematics problem. Women now constitute the majority of law school graduates, comprise over half of associates at major firms, and represent 47% of all lawyers globally.

Yet when the elevator reaches the executive floor, the numbers tell a different story: just two in ten law firm leaders are women (although when they do reach the top women legal leaders are making a difference).

The latest research from the International Bar Association’s Raising the Bar: Women in Law project confirms what many practitioners have long suspected – the profession is experiencing a spectacular leakage of female talent somewhere between the mid-career mark and the managing partner’s office.

The Numbers That Should Keep Managing Partners Awake

The IBA’s December 2024 Progress Report, synthesizing data from 11 countries across five continents, reveals the uncomfortable arithmetic:

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Judge Aitken Northern Club Hearing: NZ First Accounts Branded ‘Rubbish’ as Video Evidence Emerges

New Zealand Law News, New Zealand Law News /
Emma Aitken lawfuel

The unprecedented Judicial Conduct Panel hearing into New Zealand District Court Judge Ema Aitken’s alleged disruption of a political function has intensified, with defence counsel dismissing witness testimony as exaggerated and politically motivated. >> Top InHouse Law Role – Plus Other Roles on LawFuel’s Network Judge Aitken—the first New Zealand judge to face such proceedings—is

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NZ Law – Criminal Lawyers Called To Auckland Forum About Struggling System

New Zealand Law News, New Zealand Law News, Press Releases /
Chief DCJ Heemi

>> Looking for a new law job? – Check LawFuel’s Jobs Board In a move that barely ever happens, Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu has called a forum in Auckland next week to hear, directly and without filters, from criminal lawyers about what life inside an overloaded court system is actually doing to them

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NZ Legal Profession Hits 17,500 Lawyers as Women Dominate New Intake

Lawyers, New Zealand Law News, Press Releases /
NZ lawyers on beach

New Zealand’s legal profession is still growing, still skewing young and female, and still overwhelmingly European in makeup, according to the New Zealand Law Society’s 2025 Snapshot of the Profession. As at 30 June 2025, there were 17,504 lawyers holding a current practising certificate. That is a 2.9 percent increase on the previous year, continuing

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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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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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