Where do you work, what’s your role?
I’m with Wynn Williams. We’re a medium-sized law firm with three offices, 27 partners and almost 100 lawyers. I’m a partner in our environmental and local government team based in Auckland.
Where did you study?
At Auckland University, completing an LLB (Hons) and a BSc. My story is a bit boring. I grew up in Auckland, went to school in Auckland, studied at Auckland University and then started working in Auckland, and have worked only in Auckland. So, a real patriot, a real Blues supporter.
What’s been your career to date?
In my second-to-last year at university, I did a summer clerkship at Russell McVeagh in the resource management and litigation teams. In the summer after I finished uni, I did a legal internship at a listed property company. That was a lot of fun, but I decided to continue into private practice.
I started working full time at Russell McVeagh in February 2013 in the resource management team, which is now called EPNR – Environment Planning and Natural Resources.
A big part of why I found my way into environmental law was my science degree. I think HR managers saw my CV and that I studied law and science and said, “environmental law for you”. The combination does help in environmental law. In all the work we do, we are trying to make predictions about what will happen to the environment in the future if a project is approved or a planning rule is changed. Expert evidence plays a major role so being able to read a scientific report helps.
I worked at Russell McVeagh for about five-anda-half years and was a senior associate when I left to join Wynn Williams in Auckland. Wynn Williams is one of the oldest legal firms in New Zealand, originating in Christchurch in 1859. While the firm had an established and successful environmental and local government team, it was based entirely in Christchurch. For the first couple of years after I joined, I was the main resource management lawyer in the Auckland office.
I hired some great people, built up the Auckland team and joined the partnership in April 2021. I do the full spectrum of resource management and environmental law work, as well as more general local government-related work. Wynn Williams is an awesome firm and I’m lucky to have a broad range of great clients spanning private individuals, companies, developers, industrial, retail and commercial landowners, as well as regional and district councils.
How long have you been involved with The Law Association committees and which committees have you worked with?
I’ve been on the Environment and Resource Management Law committee for about a year (since the end of 2022). It’s the only committee I serve on, but we do a bit of collaboration with some of the other committees. I co-convene with Patrick Senior. We weren’t the original convenors for this committee. We feel humbled that The Law Association has chosen us to carry on the work of the late Dr Robert Makgill.
I joined the committee because Robert shouldertapped me. He had been asked to take over as the convenor and rebuild the committee, with quite significant change coming in environmental law. And it was a key growth area for The Law Association. Robert and I had been working together for quite some time at that point, he as a barrister and me as instructing solicitor. I had a good relationship with Robert and was thrilled to have been shoulder-tapped to support him on the committee. I still remember clearly the day he died. I just didn’t believe it.
He’s left a massive hole in the resource management and environmental law profession, at the independent bar and on the Environment Law committee. Patrick and I were humbled by the opportunity to step up and continue to shepherd the committee through that quite serious bit of work we had to do at the end of last year. But Robert left us big boots to fill!
Why is committee work important?
There are a few reasons. It’s an opportunity for a group of members of the profession with specialist skills and diverse opinions to get together and do some good for the legal profession. That’s reflected in submissions on law changes, in the writing of articles and in keeping the membership up to date with what’s going on. We’re also an independent and different voice in that specialist area, not driven by commercial interest. I think it’s easy for lawyers to get trapped into doing client work and not thinking about the profession as a whole or the development of the area of law you practise in. Being on a committee gives you a chance to get that perspective and to actually think about the law and our profession.
How do The Law Association committees make a difference?
We provide feedback from an independent voice to improve law and policy (in the environmental space, in our case). Our committee was heavily involved in submissions on the law to repeal and reform the RMA. It was a big task and while that reform legislation has now been repealed by the new government, it doesn’t feel like it was wasted work.
We organise CPD events, we think about what other practitioners might want to learn and upskill on – not only the specialist environmental practitioners but also general practitioners or other specialties that might overlap into the environmental space. We write articles that do the same thing. And we support The Law Association in terms of collegiality, practitioner wellbeing and all of those good things.
How do you see the role of a committee convenor? What specific skills do you think a convenor needs?
The role of the convenor is to bring everyone together and shepherd the committee in its work. The job is to get everyone focused on the task at hand but also to create an opportunity for everyone on the committee to share their perspectives. The skills include managing meetings, working with a wide range of people, project management, time management and making sure the people on the committee are engaged. We do the bulk of our work at our monthly committee meetings and I see the convenor’s key role is to run the meeting in a way that opens up the conversation, give everyone an opportunity to have a say, make sure the issues are well ventilated and then narrow it back down to focus on the thing we need to get done to achieve a deliverable, rather than just having a nice chat.
What is your biggest frustration as a convenor?
Honestly, I don’t find the role frustrating at all. The support we get from The Law Association committee secretaries is fantastic and makes it easy to be a convenor. It can be challenging if we need to do things more rapidly than our monthly meeting cycles cater for, but our committee is good at standing up working parties to tackle those kinds of jobs. The system is set up well and makes the job easy.
What’s been the most notable achievement or biggest focus of your committee over the past few years? Why was that important?
Despite the legislation being repealed, it would have been the RMA reform process. We were landed with thousands of pages of new legislation in November 2022 and we had until February 2023 to review it, understand it, work on it as a committee and provide some coherent feedback to try and make the law better.
It was just nuts. But we set up subcommittees and we made it happen, producing what I thought was a good submission. The submission didn’t take policy positions as you might for a client, but just focused on making the law better. And then a few of us – Paddy, me and one of our committee members, Joanna, who helped lead the submission process – went along and presented to the select committee.
Over the past year, has your committee made submissions on a parliamentary bill or any consultation paper?
The RMA reform was the big one, but we made many more throughout the year; for example, we recently submitted on new policy documents around biodiversity credits and decision-making on natural hazards. Perhaps uninteresting topics for many, but big thorny issues in our area.
We are expecting to make submissions on quite a lot in the coming years as the new government revisits and rebalances parts of the environmental law system.
What would you say to anyone thinking of becoming involved in a Law Association committee?
Absolutely do it. It’s a great way to meet other people in the industry that you might not otherwise meet. Our committee includes academics, private practitioners and in-house counsel, with people from all over the place and up and down the country. It’s a great way to grow your network, get involved in some meaningful work, and it’s rewarding. Plus, as a bonus, The Law Association looks after us – it puts on some great functions to thank the committee members, which are a lot of fun.
What’s the biggest issue facing your practice area? And how does that affect lawyers and their clients?
It’s law reform. In recent years there has been an endless tidal wave of environmental law and environmental policy reform, which is unlikely to stop. But it’s also the changing environment. Climate change and natural hazards are big issues in our field. Also, there has been a trend in recent years towards greater environmental conservatism. Freshwater quality is declining, biodiversity is being lost, but people still need to use the environment. We need somewhere to live, to grow food and to get the resources to build our cities. Environmental and resource management law is not getting any easier!
What’s the best kept secret about The Law Association?
I hope it’s becoming less of a secret now, but it’s not just an Auckland-based organisation. I wasn’t aware until I started getting involved in the committee, but a huge proportion of The Law Association membership is from outside Auckland.
What is the biggest issue facing the legal profession right now?
I think it’s the problem that the legal profession has had for a long time, which is burnout and overwork. In my practice area, everyone I know is busy and overworked. But it’s about managing yourself as well as your practice. I think it’s good that it has become more of a focus area for the profession. You read about it and you think about it and we all talk about it all the time. But that’s still a big pressure.
Have you done any media interviews/ provided any statements to the media in the past year as a committee convenor and spokesperson for ADLS/The Law Association?
No.
What is your vision for the legal profession in 2050?
Hopefully, I’ll still be in it in 2050. My vision is a profession that still has all of the good old-school things such as collegiality and tradition, but with the shift towards providing greater high-value services and less grunt work. Hopefully that work will be done by AI, as opposed to AI being our overlords. Then lawyers can focus on the fun stuff: advocacy, court work, strategic work etc.
What do you think The Law Association could do to improve its offering to members?
To keep building out its national focus through CPD and collegiality functions. The services The Law Association offers are awesome and I’m sure out-ofAuckland members would benefit. For example, the recent functions we’ve had for committee convenors have all been hosted in Auckland. As the organisation deepens its reach nationally, I think we should think about how we’re supporting those in other districts and regions.
To find out more about the professional, collegiality and networking opportunities associated with being involved in Law Association committee work, contact Daniel.conway@thelawassociation.nz or Moira.McFarland@thelawassociation.nz.
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