Ian Hasell is the new President of the Corporate Lawyers Association of New Zealand (CLANZ). He was elected unopposed in the April 2014 CLANZ committee elections.
Mr Hasell succeeds Grant Adam, who has served as President for the past two years. He began his term at the CLANZ Annual General Meeting on 16 May 2014.
It was the first CLANZ election to be held exclusively online via voting website electionz.com. Mr Hasell says the concept suits CLANZ as it will ensure more voter participation among the membership.
“Holding the election vote at the Annual General Meeting, during the annual CLANZ conference, always resulted in a low level of voter participation and reduced its relevance to the majority of CLANZ members,” he says.
“To hold it online will mean proper contested elections for the whole membership to decide on, not just those who turned up to the meeting.”
Mr Hasell says CLANZ has evolved from its establishment in 1987, with the Law Society’s split between regulatory and representative functions giving it an even more important role to play for in-house lawyers.
“In-house lawyers are very spread out across the country and are often in one- or two-person legal teams. One of the reasons I joined the CLANZ Committee was because I was by myself and had very little contact with the in-house profession.
“So one of the things we have been trying to do at CLANZ is increase interaction between in-house members with more social and educational events, and trying to assist members who are in smaller centres to network with their colleagues.”
Mr Hasell’s decision to run for CLANZ President followed several years of serving on the committee, and he described the move as the next logical step.
He joined the executive committee as communications director in 2009. For the past term he has served as conference director for next month’s 27th annual CLANZ conference in Dunedin.
“With CPD commencing in April, the theme for this year’s conference was always going to be educational to allow lawyers to complete a good chunk of their CPD hours. We have created black letter law and soft skill seminars which will be useful for all in-house lawyers regardless of whether they’re public or private sector based.”
Mr Hasell has worked in-house for his whole career. He started as a prospectus manager at a start-up property syndicator called Dominion Funds which went on to be the NZX listed DNZ Property Fund. After 14 years he became GM Corporate Services and Company Secretary responsible for corporate governance, NZX compliance, investor relations, IT and legal work primarily in relation to securities, property and commercial law.
After DNZ listed he decided on a change and is currently with Mitre 10 as associate general counsel.