The Winkelmann Warning: The Existential Challenge for Lawyers – Making Their Services Affordable

The Chief Justice has explained that the legal profession has an ‘existential challenge’ to make itself more affordable for lower income clients, saying more funding was also needed for legal aid.

In a rare interview with the Sunday Star-Times, she said that the profession has “failed to innovate” to provide the necessary service to the public.

“If it’s not the legal profession who innovate, they may find themselves losing their exclusive rights of audience in the court,” she says.

“I think that’s an existential challenge to the profession and they need to start coming up with models that meet these needs.”

No Silver Bullet

However the online solution was not the ‘silver bullet’ that some envisaged, she said.

It was an issue that would not be going away any time soon but was one we would need to engage with “forever”.

While there were many looking for an inquisitorial system she believed the ‘sweet spot’ to create a civil court situation that worked properly was somewhere in the middle of the current adversarial system and the inquisitorial one.

The courts’ Rules Committee currently has a programme to solicit ways to improve access to civil justice that seeks public imput and Justice Winkelmann notes the development of the Christchurch Earthquake list and its ability to ‘rocket docket’ cases that required particular urgency.

She noted that Judges were now much more proactive in directing the speed and manner in which cases proceeded, rather than relying on the previous party-driven process that would delay civil trials.

But there has been a dearth of civil claims in the District Court although recent announcements of more Judges may help with both the Attorney General David Parker and Justice Minister Andrew Little focused upon creating greater access to civil justice, which both strongly supported.

See the LawFuel Power List –

Recent Headlines on LawFuel NZ

• LawFuel Power List 2025: New Zealand’s Most Influential Lawyers
  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… Read more: LawFuel Power List 2025: New Zealand’s Most Influential Lawyers
• Karen Chang
  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… Read more: Karen Chang
• Michelle Redington
  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,… Read more: Michelle Redington
• Troy Pilkington
  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… Read more: Troy Pilkington
• Torrin Crowther
  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… Read more: Torrin Crowther

Featured – New Diversity Measures For US Law Firms

[adrotate banner=”87″]