Salary benchmarks · New Zealand
Lawyer Salary in New Zealand 2026: pay the NZD ledger, not a Sydney scale
Tahatū Career Navigator's 2026 occupation page puts most New Zealand lawyers between NZ$85,000 and NZ$215,000. That is the dated public print. It is not a converted Sydney lockstep, and it is the number a general counsel in Auckland or Wellington should brief against.
The 2026 window is a New Zealand ledger, not a Sydney scale.
Tahatū Career Navigator's 2026 occupation page is the dated public print for a lawyer salary New Zealand bid: most common NZ$85,000 to NZ$215,000. Across 250 structured interviews with Sydney counsel who price Auckland and Wellington seats, that local ledger — not a converted Sydney scale — is what a general counsel should put in the brief.
Lower edge of the most-common occupation span on Tahatū Career Navigator’s 2026 Lawyer, Rōia page — an occupation-wide envelope, not a PQE table and not an Auckland/Wellington split. Tahatū ↗
Four public rungs, one occupation page, local currency first. The Crown Law averages and the frozen legal-aid hour sit on the dated table below, not on this decoder. Every number is cited below.
- 18,018
- Practising lawyers as at 30 June 2026, published by the New Zealand Law Society on 2 July 2026 — the 2026 headcount a company is hiring from, not an FTE count.
- New Zealand Law Society, 2 July 2026
- 30.5%
- Share of the profession sitting in-house as at 30 June 2025 — 5,337 lawyers, the buyer side of this page.
- NZLS, Snapshot of the Profession 2025
- 0.57716
- Reserve Bank of New Zealand monthly-average NZD/USD for July 2026 — the conversion used on every USD figure here. Do not blend May or June.
- Reserve Bank of New Zealand, July 2026
The 2026 lawyer salary New Zealand ledger, in NZD and USD
The only published in-house cash ladder in the public record is Crown Law’s 2023/24 OIA. Occupation-wide Tahatū prints sit on the decoder above. USD is a conversion, not a second payroll.
Assistant Crown Counsel average
Average annual salary as at 30 June 2024. The December 2023–June 2024 band sat at NZ$78,738–$106,659.
Crown Law OIA, 19 July 2024 ↗A general counsel who needs a US-dollar budget should convert after the NZD package is set. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand printed a July 2026 monthly-average NZD/USD of 0.57716; May sat at 0.58988 and June at 0.5778. This page uses July only. At that print, Crown Counsel’s 2024 average is about US$88,000, Senior Crown Counsel about US$127,500, and the Tahatū most-common span about US$49,000–$124,000.
| Seat | NZD | USD (July 2026) | Vintage | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assistant Crown Counsel band | NZ$78,738–$106,659 | US$45,400–$61,600 | Dec 2023–Jun 2024 | Crown in-house, Wellington-centric |
| Crown Counsel band | NZ$114,585–$187,839 | US$66,100–$108,400 | Dec 2023–Jun 2024 | Crown in-house, last OIA table |
| Senior Crown Counsel / Manager band | NZ$195,538–$230,781 | US$112,900–$133,200 | Dec 2023–Jun 2024 | Crown in-house senior |
| Legal-aid FC4 / PAL4 top hour | NZ$178 per hour | US$103 per hour | Rates from 1 July 2022 | Crown provider fee, not a salary |
| Public Service mean base (all occupations) | NZ$103,300 | US$59,600 | 30 June 2025 | Whole Public Service, not counsel |
Crown Law’s bands ran from December 2023 to June 2024; Assistant Crown Counsel averaged NZ$90,849.92, Crown Counsel NZ$152,549.29, Senior Crown Counsel NZ$220,940.50 and Manager NZ$220,368.33 as at 30 June 2024. Legal-aid FC4 / PAL4 experience level 3 is NZ$178 an hour GST exclusive, still the 1 July 2022 rate on pages updated into 2026. The Public Service Commission’s mean base of NZ$103,300 as at 30 June 2025 is the whole Public Service, not a lawyer mean. No national firm published a 2026 Auckland or Wellington PQE ladder that this page can cite.
Who earns the figure, and who writes the check.
The buyer on this page is more often a general counsel, a chief legal officer or a Wellington department than a Sydney partnership committee.
The Snapshot of the Profession 2025, compiled on regulator data as at 30 June 2025, counted 17,504 practising-certificate holders, of whom 16,119 were in New Zealand and 1,385 overseas — one New Zealand-based lawyer per 331 people on a Stats NZ 31 March 2025 population of 5,330,600. Net growth versus 2024 was 495 lawyers, or 2.9 percent. Employees of law firms were 5,865–5,866 (excluding partners, directors, sole practitioners and shareholders); partners 1,624; directors of incorporated firms 1,669; barristers sole 1,693. ILANZ, writing in LawTalk on 28 March 2025, described the same in-house community as over 5,000 lawyers across central government, Crown entities, local government, commercial organizations and not-for-profits.
The company reader is a general counsel, chief legal officer or head of legal who has to put a lawyer on a New Zealand payroll.
- Auckland commercial desks sit inside NZX issuers, major banks and the Financial Markets Authority. The FMA’s March 2025 briefing to the incoming minister recorded 369 staff, 63 percent in Auckland, 35 percent in Wellington and 2 percent in Christchurch, with a General Counsel seat on the executive bench.
- Wellington public desks sit inside the Government Legal Network. Crown Law’s 2024/25 annual report describes the Solicitor-General as professional head of more than 900 government lawyers; the GLN web page says over 1,000. Band the network at about 900–1,000+; the 2022–2026 strategy’s figure of approximately 870 core-agency lawyers is a different document and year. That strategy put 153 government lawyers in Auckland and 52 in Christchurch, with the majority in Wellington.
- Published Crown titles on the 19 July 2024 OIA are Assistant Crown Counsel, Crown Counsel, Senior Crown Counsel and Manager holding a practising certificate. Parliamentary Counsel Office’s 2023 briefing to the incoming Attorney-General described about 110 staff, with the Drafting Group all lawyers. Inland Revenue Legal Services, updated 19 May 2025, runs tax-technical advice, litigation and prosecution inside Customer and Compliance Services.
- National firms still bid against in-house. Legal 500 Asia-Pacific 2026 ranks MinterEllisonRuddWatts, Simpson Grierson, Bell Gully and Chapman Tripp in Corporate and M&A Tier 1, and MinterEllisonRuddWatts, Bell Gully, Buddle Findlay and Chapman Tripp in Banking and Finance Tier 1. Chambers Asia-Pacific 2026 puts Bell Gully at 45 partners and approximately 180 lawyers in Auckland and Wellington only. Bell Gully’s own about page describes a firm of about 350 people; Simpson Grierson’s Chambers profile lists three offices and a company size of 320. Those directories measure rank, not open seats.
- Crown prosecution is a firm seat. Crown Solicitor warrants are held by independent firms, not by Crown Law staff. Crown Law’s Public Prosecutions Unit funds and oversees the network; four Crown Solicitor office reviews were completed in 2024/25. The published title is Crown Solicitor — an independent prosecution firm holding a city warrant — and it is not an in-house payroll number.
- Many commercial desks are thin. ILANZ runs Sole Counsel catch-ups in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and is building a Career Development Framework from new-to-in-house through aspiring general counsel. The 2026 in-house bid is often a one- or two-lawyer team, not only a bank or issuer general counsel chair.
The lawyer reader is earning a New Zealand figure, not a converted Australian one, and the credential gate is local.
- Admission is a High Court gate. The New Zealand Law Society’s admission page requires an NZCLE-approved LLB or JD, a Professional Legal Studies Course at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies or College of Law, an NZCLE certificate, an NZLS certificate of character, admission to the roll, and a current practising certificate. People without a current certificate cannot call themselves lawyers under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006.
- The 2026/27 compulsory pack for employed lawyers and barristers is NZ$1,951.55 GST inclusive on the Law Society fees page — about US$1,126 at 0.57716. Own-account lawyers with a trust account pay NZ$2,776.10 GST inclusive. Optional membership is NZ$330 plus GST.
- Overseas qualification sits behind an exam. The New Zealand Law and Practice Examination has a 2026 sitting on 24–25 November 2026 in Auckland, Waikato, Victoria University of Wellington, Canterbury, Otago, and Queen Mary University of London. Australian-admitted lawyers use the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Act 1997 and High Court form LA 4. Lawyer is not a listed shortage occupation on Immigration New Zealand’s Green List for 18 August 2025, so 2026 seats fill from the domestic admitted pool and Trans-Tasman recognition, not from a Green List surge.
- The in-house majority is female; partnership is not. The 2025 Snapshot records women at 64.5 percent of in-house and 64.6 percent of firm employees, and at 37.6 percent of partners. Non-renewal by 1 July 2025 was 871 lawyers, a 5.0 percent rate.
Pay the dated NZD ledger. Convert to USD after.
Why a converted Sydney number fails an Auckland brief.
The Trans-Tasman desk that covers this work sits in Sydney. The New Zealand bid still has to clear a New Zealand ledger.
Imported scaleLocal ledger
- Read the NZD print first Tahatū occupation span, Crown Law’s last OIA, and the city desk — Auckland commercial or Wellington Crown — before any foreign lockstep is opened.
- Name the seat, not the country An Auckland bank counsel and a Wellington Crown Counsel are both New Zealand lawyers and are not the same bid. City and buyer type move the number more than a headline FX rate.
- Convert to USD last A US-dollar budget is a translation of an NZD package at a dated Reserve Bank print. It is not a second payroll and it is not a reason to import an Australian scale.
Across 250 structured interviews with Sydney associates and counsel, 61 of 94 respondents who had priced an Auckland or Wellington in-house seat over a 24-month window told Sartori the first error was converting a Sydney band at the headline exchange rate rather than reading the New Zealand ledger. Forty-four of 71 general counsel and heads of legal inside those 94 said their finance team would sign a Crown-published number faster than a converted Australian print.
Sartori maps roughly 6,500 lawyers on the Sydney desk that covers this Trans-Tasman work. That file is coverage for an associate search run from Sydney, including New Zealand in-house mandates, not a headcount of Auckland lawyers. Globally the firm maps nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles and has run quarterly market surveys since 2019.
A general counsel at an NZX-listed issuer in Auckland described the internal logic in one line: finance would take Crown Law’s bands; they would not take a converted Sydney number. The Sydney 2026 salary page and the Australia 2026 salary page own those markets. This page names them for contrast. It does not restage their tables.
The 2026 rules that change what the lawyer actually does.
Pay follows the work. The 2026 New Zealand window is being reset by dated statutes and court practice, not by a partnership scale from across the Tasman.
Conduct and creditInvestment and civil process
- CoFI beds in Banks, insurers and non-bank deposit takers hold a conduct license and a fair-conduct program. Auckland in-house financial-services counsel live inside that maintenance cycle.
- Commercial List, then new High Court rules Auckland gets a dedicated commercial track; ordinary proceedings filed after the new year run evidence-first with a Judicial Issues Conference. Disputes counsel spend time differently, not merely more of it.
- Overseas investment rewrite Low-risk files move faster; national-interest screens stay senior. Auckland corporate and Wellington public-law desks share the same statute and not the same hour.
- Consumer credit moves to the FMA The conduct regulator picks up CCCFA. Bank and insurer in-house investigations work consolidates; the Commerce Commission credit team does not.
The Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Act 2022 has been fully in force since 31 March 2025. The FMA’s media release that day recorded 17 banks licensed, plus credit unions and building societies. The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 5 June 2026; the Commerce Commission’s transfer page states the FMA took active CCCFA investigations, most litigation, credit staff and data from 1 July 2026. Fair-dealing is already a capital event: Financial Markets Authority v IAG New Zealand Ltd [2025] NZHC 2908, decided 3 October 2025, recorded an agreed pecuniary penalty of NZ$19,500,000 (about US$11.3 million at 0.57716). The FMA’s 2024/25 annual report also records a Westpac penalty of NZ$3.25 million and an AA Insurance penalty of NZ$6.175 million.
The Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Act has been in force since 6 March 2026. LINZ’s Pānui of 30 July 2026 recorded 701 applications approved in 2025/26 and NZ$24 billion of transactions through the regime (about US$13.9 billion). Primary and forestry consent carries a fee of NZ$22,800 GST inclusive; the NZ$5 million-plus house pathway is NZ$2,040–$3,500. The High Court (Improved Access to Civil Justice) Amendment Rules 2025, SR 2025/149, have been in force since 1 January 2026 for ordinary proceedings filed after that date. The High Court Annual Report 2025, published May 2026, records that the Auckland Commercial List commenced in October 2025, that new civil proceedings rose to 2,435 from 2,217 in 2024, and that insolvency new business reached 2,385. The Official Assignee recorded 681 liquidations in 2025/26, up from 97 in 2021/22, on the Insolvency and Trustee Service annual-estates table.
NZX’s 2025 annual report put total capital listed and raised at NZ$21.5 billion (about US$12.4 billion), including Fonterra Co-operative Group’s transfer to the Main Board; excluding that transfer the figure is NZ$14.4 billion. Named raises included Contact Energy equity of NZ$1.5 billion, a Ryman Healthcare placement and entitlement offer of NZ$1 billion, and an ASB Group debt listing of NZ$1.2 billion. The Takeovers Panel’s annual report for the year ended 30 June 2025 recorded 13 monitored transactions and five Code-company schemes of arrangement. The Commerce Commission decided six merger-clearance applications in 2024/25, in an average 65 working days, and declined the Foodstuffs North Island / Foodstuffs South Island grocery combination in September 2024.
The Fast-track Approvals Amendment Act 2025 has main commencement from 17 December 2025, with specified sections from 31 March 2026, and the Planning Bill transition expressly preserves Fast-track processing. Infrastructure and environmental counsel in Auckland and Wellington stay on that clock through 2026 applications. Wellington’s public-law overlay is a bill, not an Act, until it is. The Planning Bill, government bill 2025/235, had its second reading on 4 August 2026; as at 4 September 2026 a third reading was not yet recorded on the legislation site. The New Zealand Law Society’s 28 May 2026 Budget note states Budget 2026 allocates NZ$46.331 million over four years to establish and operate a Planning Tribunal, and funds NZ$831 million per year over four financial years to implement Holidays Act reforms. Three-strikes provisions have been in force since 17 June 2025; the same NZLS note puts the prison population at 11,255 as at March 2026, with Corrections funded to 12,118 by the end of 2026/27. Legal-aid cost rose from NZ$192.5 million to NZ$304.7 million in five years, per the Ministry of Justice “What’s New” page, and Budget 2026’s NZ$30.280 million plug is time-limited to 2026/27. Hourly rates did not move.
| Desk | Auckland commercial | Wellington public |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the check | NZX issuer, bank, insurer, FMA-facing in-house | Department, Crown entity, Crown Law, GLN |
| What moved in 2025–26 | OIO rewrite, CoFI, CCCFA transfer, NZX capital, Takeovers Code, insolvency volumes | Planning Bill (still a bill), Treaty and MACA litigation, three-strikes, Holidays Act funding |
| Published cash comparable | Tahatū occupation span; no listed GC dollar on issuer reports | Crown Law 2023/24 OIA bands and 30 June 2024 averages |
| Credential the offer assumes | Current NZ practising certificate; often FMCA / AML / CCCFA literacy | Current NZ practising certificate; Crown Counsel title family or Solicitor 1 through senior |
How a New Zealand in-house bid actually clears.
Sartori has worked the Sydney associate desk for five years. Auckland and Wellington in-house bids sit on that same Trans-Tasman file.
Sartori’s Sydney mandate telemetry records 20 closed associate searches over the trailing three years, at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical 6-to-12-week timeline, with median offer-to-acceptance of 12 working days and counter-offer incidence of 34 percent. Of those 20 closed searches, 4 were New Zealand in-house seats — Auckland corporate or Wellington Crown/GLN. Two of those 4 needed a second compensation conversation because the first package had been reverse-engineered from a Sydney scale. That is the finding that does not flatter us: we accepted those briefs. One of the 4 ran past 12 weeks. Two of the 4 drew a counter-offer.
Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019, in the 2026 second-quarter wave, recorded 16 of 28 Trans-Tasman in-house hiring-manager replies naming “do not brief off Sydney” as the instruction they wished they had received before the first number went to finance.
Two composites from the Sydney associate book, presented as Sartori work. No real issuer, firm or candidate is named. The company reader should watch the ledger and the city desk; the lawyer reader should watch whether the NZD on the letter is an occupation envelope, a Crown band, or someone’s converted Australian print.
An NZX-listed issuer, Auckland. A general counsel asked us to fill a senior legal-counsel seat covering overseas-investment filings and capital-markets work, and arrived with a band converted from a Sydney corporate average. Candidates with New Zealand practising certificates and OIO files would not engage at that print; they read it as a cut. We pulled the Australian number out of the brief, rebuilt the package against the Tahatū span and the Crown Counsel average as public comparables, and closed in 9 weeks. A national-firm counter arrived on day 8; the candidate signed on day 12, the median for this line. The general counsel at that issuer told Sartori finance would take Crown Law’s bands and would not take a converted Sydney number.
A policy department, Wellington. A head of legal needed a Crown Counsel equivalent on a judicial-review and legislative-instructions desk. Finance would approve only a number that could be shown on a public table. We briefed against the 19 July 2024 OIA Crown Counsel band, not against legal-aid hours and not against a Sydney conversion, and closed in 11 weeks. The head of legal at that department told us the 2023/24 vintage was a problem they could explain to a chief financial officer; an unsourced private-practice step was not.
If you are a company that has to put a New Zealand lawyer on the payroll — a general counsel adding Auckland corporate counsel, a chief legal officer dual-hatting company secretary, a head of HR handed an Australian print and an OIO calendar — the service view of the same book is our in-house and general counsel search and our associate and attorney recruiting. Companies building a legal function from nothing rather than replacing a named chair should start with hiring your first general counsel. The private-practice versus in-house cash comparison that this page does not restage lives on our private practice vs in-house salary guide. The New Zealand briefs that used a converted Sydney number were the slow ones.
Finance would take Crown Law's bands. They would not take a converted Sydney number.
What this file cannot see — and will not invent.
A page that claims a 2026 Chapman Tripp lockstep is guessing. The public record does not publish one, and neither does our own mapping.
The Public Service Commission recorded 1,533 Public Service redundancies in the year to 30 June 2025, the highest since the series began in 2000, at an average payment of NZ$52,500. That is a whole-of-service cut, not a lawyer-headcount cut, and the NZLS Budget note records Crown Law and the Ministry of Justice among agencies excluded from some savings. Crown Law’s own 2024/25 annual report puts the gender pay gap (mean) at 21.0 percent in 2025 versus 17.2 percent in 2024, and attributes the widening to junior lawyers and support staff in lower bands being predominantly female and to a small number of senior higher-paid women leaving. Personnel-cost budgeting assumed 239 FTE; the emissions table shows 232 FTE in the latest year.
The Snapshot records 80 percent of lawyers giving the regulator at least one area of practice as at 30 June 2025, with company and commercial the largest declared seat at 6,246, then property 4,801, civil litigation 4,354, bank and finance 2,026, administrative and public 2,202, and resource management 1,465. Lawyers may select more than one area. That is not a unique-headcount of jobs, and it is not a hiring census. Policy Quarterly, in an article published 9 November 2025, found legal professionals had the second-highest average income in its dataset, with life satisfaction below average relative to that income. The abstract does not carry a 2026 dollar, so this page does not invent one.
Lawyer salary in New Zealand, 2026: questions from both sides of the offer letter
What is a typical lawyer salary New Zealand general counsel should budget in 2026?
Tahatū Career Navigator’s 2026 occupation page puts most New Zealand lawyers between NZ$85,000 and NZ$215,000. That is an occupation-wide envelope, not an Auckland PQE table and not a city split. Crown Counsel averaged NZ$152,549 in the year ended 30 June 2024 on Crown Law’s last OIA release. Converted at the Reserve Bank’s July 2026 monthly-average NZD/USD of 0.57716, the common band is about US$49,000–$124,000.
How should a company convert a New Zealand lawyer package into US dollars in 2026?
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s July 2026 monthly-average NZD/USD print was 0.57716. Use that dated rate and say so; do not blend the May 0.58988 or June 0.5778 prints into the same column. At 0.57716, Tahatū’s most-common band is about US$49,000–$124,000 and Crown Counsel’s 2024 average is about US$88,000.
What does Crown Counsel earn on the last published Wellington bands?
Crown Law’s 19 July 2024 OIA put Crown Counsel at NZ$114,585–$187,839 for December 2023 to June 2024, averaging NZ$152,549. Senior Crown Counsel sat at NZ$195,538–$230,781, averaging NZ$220,940.50. Those are Wellington-centric Crown in-house bands, not private-practice PQE, and no later table was published.
Should an Auckland in-house bid match a Sydney scale?
No. The 2026 New Zealand ledger is NZD cash on a local practising-certificate market, not an Australian conversion. Across 250 structured interviews with Sydney counsel who price Auckland and Wellington seats, 61 of 94 respondents over a 24-month window named a converted Sydney band as the first error. The Sydney and Australia tables live on their own pages.
How long does Sartori take to close a Trans-Tasman associate search that includes a New Zealand seat?
Typical files close in 6 to 12 weeks, with a median 12 working days from offer to signature and a 93 percent completion rate. That is the Sydney associate book over three years, on 20 closed searches, from a desk that has worked this market for five years. Counter-offer incidence on the line is 34 percent.
Do legal-aid hourly rates set 2026 private-practice pay in New Zealand?
No. Ministry of Justice family, civil and criminal legal-aid rates are still those effective 1 July 2022. Budget 2026 added NZ$30.280 million for 2026/27 only; it did not lift the hourly schedule. A company matching an Auckland commercial lawyer off a legal-aid hour is reading the wrong ledger.
Occupation prints, Crown bands, and the 2026 statute cluster.
Occupation NZD comes from Tahatū. Crown NZD comes from the last OIA. Headcount comes from the Law Society. USD is a Reserve Bank conversion. Sartori figures come from the Sydney associate research program.
Sources and further reading
51 references- Sartori & Partners — Sydney Legal Talent Research Programme (250 structured interviews; ~6,500 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Lawyer numbers exceed 18,000 as at 30 June 2026 lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Snapshot of the Profession 2025 lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- A strong, progressive and trusted legal profession (Annual Report 2025) lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Lawyer, Rōia — Tahatū Career Navigator tahatu.govt.nz ↗
- Proactively released by the Crown Law Office (OIA353/1, 19 July 2024) crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- Annual Report 2024–2025 (Crown Law Office) crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- Government Legal Network crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- GOVERNMENT LEGAL SERVICES STRATEGY 2022-2026 crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- Organisational Overview (Crown Law Office) crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- Wage trends (Public Service Commission) publicservice.govt.nz ↗
- Workforce costs (Public Service Commission) publicservice.govt.nz ↗
- Family or civil fee rates justice.govt.nz ↗
- Criminal fee rates justice.govt.nz ↗
- What's New for lawyers providing Legal Aid justice.govt.nz ↗
- Budget 2026 (Ministry of Justice) justice.govt.nz ↗
- What Budget 2026 means for the legal profession lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Fees (practising certificates) lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Admission lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Exchange rates and Wholesale interest rates rbnz.govt.nz ↗
- NZX Annual Report 2025 downloads.ctfassets.net ↗
- TAKEOVERS PANEL (Annual Report 2025) takeovers.govt.nz ↗
- Pānui - July 2026 linz.govt.nz ↗
- The Overseas Investment Act has changed linz.govt.nz ↗
- Reform of the Overseas Investment Act linz.govt.nz ↗
- High Court of New Zealand Annual Report 2025 courtsofnz.govt.nz ↗
- High Court (Improved Access to Civil Justice) Amendment Rules 2025 legislation.govt.nz ↗
- Annual figures for new estates since 1988 insolvency.govt.nz ↗
- Pūrongo ā-tau Annual Report 2024/25 (Commerce Commission) comcom.govt.nz ↗
- Transfer of responsibility for regulation of consumer credit comcom.govt.nz ↗
- CoFI regime now in effect fma.govt.nz ↗
- FINANCIAL MARKETS AUTHORITY v IAG NEW ZEALAND LTD [2025] NZHC 2908 fma.govt.nz ↗
- Fast-track Approvals Amendment Act 2025 legislation.govt.nz ↗
- Takeovers Panel - Briefing for the incoming Minister - April 2026 takeovers.govt.nz ↗
- About us - Bell Gully bellgully.com ↗
- Crown Solicitor Contacts crownlaw.govt.nz ↗
- New three strikes laws take effect justice.govt.nz ↗
- ILANZ – who we are and what we do lawsociety.org.nz ↗
- Corporate and M&A in New Zealand — The Legal 500 legal500.com ↗
- Banking and finance in New Zealand — The Legal 500 legal500.com ↗
- Bell Gully, Asia-Pacific 2026 — Chambers chambers.com ↗
- The New Zealand Law and Practice Examination nzcle.org.nz ↗
- Appendix 13 - Green List (18/08/2025) immigration.govt.nz ↗
- FMA Briefing to the incoming Minister, March 2025 fma.govt.nz ↗
- Planning Bill legislation.govt.nz ↗
- Simpson Grierson, Asia-Pacific 2026 — Chambers chambers.com ↗
- Membership | ILANZ ilanz.org ↗
- Briefing for the incoming Attorney-General 2023 pco.govt.nz ↗
- Legal services (Inland Revenue) ird.govt.nz ↗
- Occupation and Subjective Wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand ojs.victoria.ac.nz ↗
- Financial Markets Authority Annual Report 2024/25 fma.govt.nz ↗
Tahatū is an occupation-wide envelope, not a PQE or city table. Crown Law bands and averages cover 2023/24. Legal-aid hours are provider fees frozen from 1 July 2022. The Public Service mean is every occupation. GLN 870 / 900 / 1,000+ are different documents and years. USD conversions use the Reserve Bank July 2026 monthly-average NZD/USD of 0.57716. Directory ranks measure rank, not vacancies.
Our own numbers — the Sydney interview cohort, the mandate telemetry, the counter-offer incidence and the offer-to-acceptance window — come from the continuous research program described on our research page.
Adjacent maps for the same two readers.
Lawyer Salary in Sydney 2026
The Australian-dollar table this page tells you not to import — gazetted Crown floors, corporate certificate counts, and the USD wait.
Read the Sydney ledgerPrivate Practice vs In-House: The Salary Comparison
Where the cash gap is widest, where it inverts at the top, and why comparing base alone misleads a general counsel who has to price a seat.
Compare the two tracksIn-House and General Counsel Search
How Sartori briefs, maps and closes corporate legal seats for companies that have to put a lawyer on the payroll.
See in-house counsel recruitingIn-house legal recruiters in Auckland
Practising certificates, contractual notice, and the retained clock for a general counsel or a chief executive hiring in Auckland.
Auckland in-house searchA quiet conversation
Matching a New Zealand lawyer off a Sydney print?
We run associate and in-house search from Sydney for companies that have to put a lawyer on an Auckland or Wellington payroll. We are as willing to tell you a converted Australian band is the wrong brief as to open a search. Confidential, no obligation.