Cyclone Gabrielle information and updates for the profession are available here.
The Independent Review Panel's report is now available. More information.

Skip to main content

New Zealand Law Society - LawTalk issue 906

Page location

Home
News
Publications
LawTalk
LawTalk issue 906

LawTalk issue 906

LawTalk issue 906

05 May 2017

The latest issue of LawTalk includes articles on developments in several areas of the law and legal practice, practice management systems, blogging by lawyers, mediation, practising law in Whakatane, some statistics on New Zealand law firms and six problematical wills.

Download LawTalk issue 906 (PDF file, 11.16 MB) View as a flip-book ISSUU.COM

In 2014, a brilliant young New Zealand lawyer, Max Harris, suddenly found himself having open heart surgery in England to repair an aneurysm. The experience caused him to think hard about how best to use his talents: “It brought into sharp relief the need to use my time well and to…

The Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders, Bailees and Other Persons Legislation Bill was passed by Parliament on 8 November 2016. It has been divided into the following pieces of legislation and the original bill no longer exists: Bail (Drug and Alcohol Testing) Amendment Act 2016; Parole (Drug and Alcohol Testing)…

On a trip to South-east Asia in October last year, Dunedin lawyer Peter Sara met an agency dealing with human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Mr Sara is the chair of the New Zealand wing of International Needs, an international Christian charity. The object of the trip was to seek out opportunities…

It doesn’t matter if you like it, or even if you believe it, automation is accelerating. At some point – not far off according to some – most people will simply have no way of adding economic value. Robots and computers will deliver the same results cheaper, faster, and more…

Focus on Whakatane

Whakatane lawyer David Sparks says the local law fraternity was very tightknit when he moved there 44 years ago. As a newcomer to the Eastern Bay of Plenty town he was taken around all the law firms and introduced to all the other local lawyers – a tradition at the…

Prestige Lawyers in the heart of Auckland is an international law firm that’s been operating since 2008. The firm was conceived by director and principal Royal Reed. The legal team deal mainly with Chinese-speaking communities, but not all of their lawyers are native Chinese.

26 March 1897, Sir Āpirana Ngata becomes first Māori lawyer. 3 May 1897, Walter Scott Reid elected as first President of the New Zealand Law Society. 10 May 1897, Ethel Benjamin becomes NZ’s first woman lawyer. The distinguished leader: Sir Āpirana NgataBy Geoff Adlam On 26 March 1897 Āpirana Turupa Ngata was admitted as…

People in the law

Coming from the remote Maldives in the Indian Ocean motivated a Wellington-based immigrant lawyer to excel in two difficult and oft-considered dry areas of practice, tax and intellectual property law.

David Lyon happy at work... One of the true characters of the legal profession has taken down his shingle. David Lyon retired from the legal profession at the end of last year, after 54 years practising law. David began his legal career as a law clerk with Reyburn McArthur and Boyes in…

Update

Lawyers and incorporated law firms currently must report any suspicious transaction in certain circumstances as set out in sections 3 and 15 of the Financial Transactions Reporting Act 1996 (FTRA). This requirement is expected to extend to suspicious activity under Phase 2 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of…

The Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand (AMINZ) has been chosen as the official agency to appoint arbitrators in the place of the High Court. The appointment, which came into force on 1 March 2017, marks a significant amendment that was made last October to the Arbitration Act 1996. It…

Recent proposals for a new financial advice regime will impose a duty on banks, insurance companies and their distributors to put the customer’s interests first. This will apply to any recommendation of a financial product or service, be it from a financial adviser in Kerikeri or “robo-advice” provided using algorithms…

Shailer and Haerewa v R [2017] NZCA 38On 10 August 2015, two months after three-year-old Moko Rangitoheriri had been placed into the temporary care of Tania Shailer and David Haerewa, baby Moko was pronounced dead in a resuscitation room at Taupo Hospital’s Emergency Department. The primary cause of Moko’s death was…

Relationship property proceedings often affect more than just the parties to the relationship. Although the remedies available under the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 (the PRA) in relation to trusts are limited, orders that are made can still affect beneficiaries. In the family trust context these will often be children of…

Copyright law has been playing catch-up with technology since the Statute of Anne in 1710, a legislative reaction to the ubiquity of printing presses. New Zealand’s 1962 Copyright Act came into being just before photocopiers came into common use. The 1994 Act preceded the widespread availability of the internet. The…

The GST treatment of New Zealand land-related legal and other services provided to non-resident clients changed significantly from 1 April 2017. The GST Act formerly provided that New Zealand land-related services supplied to non-residents would not be zero-rated only if they were supplied “directly in connection with” the relevant land. The phrase…

An issue frequently arising for trustees is how to approach a request by a beneficiary for trust documents. The recent Supreme Court decision Erceg v Erceg [2017] NZSC 28 provides helpful guidance for trustees when faced with such a request and sets out the factors to consider when balancing the…

The New Lawyer

Emma von VehBorn in South Africa, Emma von Veh’s family moved to New Zealand when she was a child. “At high school, my favourite subject was always English, but I also had an aptitude for maths and the sciences and was wary of limiting my choices if I were to drop…

I have gathered you all here today to tell you about career design, with the help of my good friends Amy Poehler and Daniel Kahneman. Our careers are cool and wondrous things that we get to guide and design how we like (mostly). Design is about conscious care given to how…

Lawyers Complains Service

A lawyer, D, who acted on instructions from a hacker he believed was his client and paid client funds into unrelated bank accounts, was guilty of unsatisfactory conduct. A lawyer’s standards committee censured D and ordered him to pay the client, Ms C, $30,828, the portion of the settlement funds that…

A lawyer, B, who filed an affidavit that alleged another lawyer had “kidnapped” a young girl has been censured and fined $5,000. The lawyers standards committee considered that B had not taken appropriate steps to ensure that reasonable grounds existed for the allegations before they were filed in court, as required…

A criminal defence lawyer has been censured and fined by a lawyers standards committee for two separate incidents of unprofessional behaviour. In one incident, the lawyer, C, interrupted a police prosecutor while he was attending to another matter. The prosecutor said he would assist C once he had dealt with that…

Practice

Life as a private investigator isn’t just about tracking cheating spouses or sitting in cars taking long-range photos. We talk to three private investigators who work closely with the legal profession. Interviewing witnesses in prison, surveillance operations and serving legal documents are just some of the tasks Auckland-based private investigator Anna…

Strategies for profitability in law firms

The past two years have been good for most law firms in the United Kingdom and New Zealand with both profitability and cash flow improving. While there are significant issues, especially around staff retention and attraction, and also succession planning, most firms have done well. There are also issues concerning certain…

Marketing your law practice online

Lawyers and law firms need to make sure their online brand is visible and on point, are sending the right message to the right people, are blogging enough to keep Google interested, are LinkedIn, and aren’t committing a faux pas on Twitter. It can be a lot to get your…

Practice management software is designed to streamline lawyers’ workflow, help them keep on top of tasks and stop them getting buried under a pile of paperwork. Different systems offer different services, but components can include centralised databases to manage client records and case files, help with document management and assembly,…

Actionstep is a cloud-based practice management system developed and marketed by Actionstep here in New Zealand. It runs primarily through a web browser. I wanted to review this product because I am passionate about the potential for cloud-based products like Actionstep to help make law practices more efficient. I have heard…

But what’s in it for the reader?Lawyers and legal academics blogging on legal ramifications buried in some of the biggest national or international developments has become a growing trend. One such blogger is Andrew Geddis, a Professor at the University of Otago Faculty of Law and a regular writer on the…

The New Zealand Law Society and Victoria University’s Law School are collaborating to equip future members of the legal profession with unconscious bias training. This work stems from a recommendation made by the Law Society’s Women’s Advisory Panel to embed unconscious bias training at key stages of legal careers.

Mediation

On 8 March 2017 the Supreme Court released its decision in Erceg v Erceg [2017] NZSC 28. This litigation, which has been ongoing for about two and a half years, concerned an application by Ivan Erceg against the trustees of two family trusts (one trustee being his sister) seeking disclosure…

Recording and implementing settlement agreements

Mediation allows parties to exercise self-determination. The parties involved create both the outcome and the terms of settlement. This normally means the parties take psychological ownership of the outcome, and are more likely to comply with an agreement reached during mediation. In order to reap the benefits of a mediated outcome,…