Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias QC and Dr Matthew
Palmer at the launch of The Treaty of Waitangi
in New Zealand's Law and Constitution, which has
been named New Zealand's best legal book for 2008.
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Legal Māori Archive available
The first stage of the Legal Māori Project – the Legal Māori Archive – was launched on 8 June. This is the initial step towards producing New Zealand’s first Legal Māori Dictionary.
The first stage has involved collecting more than 14,000 pages of 19th century documents that illustrate the bilingual nature of New Zealand’s legal history. The archive has been created in partnership with Victoria University’s New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC), which has digitised the documents and made them available as fully searchable text.
“This is our first funded milestone,” project co-leader, Victoria University law lecturer, Mamari Stephens, says. “The point of digitising the documents is to make the texts electronically available so we can analyse the language and establish the Legal Māori corpus, which is our next milestone.” Read more...
New real estate form
REINZ has now completed its own standard form agreement for the sale and purchase of real estate, which it plans to release to real estate agents on 1 July.
Although REINZ’s drafting was already well under way, the NZLS Property Law Section (PLS), at its own request, was given an opportunity to review and comment on the form (as reported in LawTalk 728, 20; 4 May 2009), though not all its suggestions were taken on board.
The PLS is developing a paper setting out matters that lawyers will need to consider in relation to the new form. It is also preparing some appropriate amending provisions where these are considered desirable.
The new form differs considerably from the former ADLS-REINZ form and there are significant issues property lawyers need to be aware of when advising clients. Read more...
Lifting the veil of secrecy: depression in our profession
The Women’s Consultative Group is investigating the effect of stress and resulting depressive disorders within the legal profession.
With daily media reports about the recession and job redundancies, many are feeling the effects of increased stress coupled with job insecurity. Some firms are retrenching by making some staff redundant or considering a four-day week.
In contrast, for some practitioners, levels of work have increased markedly, causing more stress; for instance, in the criminal, employment and family law areas. Read more...