Professor Charles Rickett is the new Dean of AUT University’s Law School. Professor Rickett is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge law schools, and has held teaching appointments in England, China, Australia and New Zealand. His teaching interests include contract law, equity and trusts, banking law, restitution, theories of obligations and legal ethics, and he has published widely in these areas. Professor Allan Beever has been appointed as a Professor of Law at AUT. Professor Beever is a widely published theorist of private law. His research and teaching has focused in particular on the law of civil wrongs. He has previously held positions at the Universities of South Australia, Southampton, Durham and Auckland and at the Max Plank Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg. He has also held a visiting position at the University of Ottawa.

The Arbitrators and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand (AMINZ) has two new leaders. The institute’s new President is David Patten. Serving with him as Vice-President is John Walton. Mr Patten, a barrister with a commercial background, enjoys seeing disputes resolved without recourse to the courts. As an executive educator, his work in teaching dispute resolution skills was seen as a natural fit with the institute’s growing activity in this area. Mr Walton is a barrister at Bankside Chambers and has a background in resolving disputes involving construction law. A trained arbitrator and mediator, he specialises in major infrastructure development, dispute avoidance and dispute management.