The 2023 LawFuel Gender Survey of New Zealand Law Firms -

Women In New Zealand Law – The 2023 Stats

As women are the majority of lawyers in New Zealand and as gender equality remains elusive for many law firms, the annual LawFuel survey of gender equality among New Zealand firms does show an ongoing, albeit slow trend toward reaching the levels most in the profession would like to see.

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There are more women in law than ever with almost 54 percent of the more than 15,500 New Zealand lawyers being women.

The Law Society’s Snapshot of the Profession indicated that almost 72 percent of law graduates in 2021 were women (compared to 26 percent in 1980) with over 8300 women lawyers in practice.

But there has long been the issue of the relative lack women reaching partnership and law firm gender parity has been a festering issue for many years despite the generally best efforts of law firms to correct the issue.

Similarly, the number of equity-linked partnerships for women has also increased compared to the salaried partnerships that were previously considerably more common than today.

Of the major law firms with 40 or more partners, Chapman Tripp have shown the largest increase in female partners – rising to 38 percent from 33 percent in 2022.

Most of the others in the large group remained around the 35 percent level while among the smaller, ‘biglaw’ firms, Wynn Williams almost reached the 50 percent mark (at 49 percent) with DLA Piper and Anderson Lloyd lifting their percentages to 45 percent.

The 2023 LawFuel Law Firm Gender Survey Results

Law Firm	Total Partners	Female	Male	% Female	Female % 2022
Wynn Williams	27	13	14	49	27
DLA Piper	20	9	11	45	41
Anderson Lloyd	29	13	16	45	41
AWS	19	8	11	42	19
Meredith Connell	34	13	21	38	31
Chapman Tripp	53	20	33	38	33
Simpson Grierson	43	15	38	35	35
Bell Gully	49	17	32	35	32
MinterEllisonRuddWatts	46	16	30	35	37
Lane Neave	26	9	17	35	20
Russell McVeagh	45	15	30	33	33
Buddle Findlay	47	15	32	32	30

Of the major firms omitted from the list Duncan Cotterill who have a 31 percent female partnership quotient (15 out of 48 partners). The firm does not disclose the number of equity partners.

Tompkins Wake did not respond to the survey.

Kensington Swan Dentons did not respond either, although last year they came in at 40 percent female (an unfortunate website functionality also added to the headcount difficulties).

Women Law Firm Leaders

Several firms have also had women leading the firm, a situation that has accelerated in recent years as more law firms work towards including more women in senior management roles. The large law firm leader list includes the following:

Philippa Muir, Simpson Grierson