On the Absconding of New Zealand Juniors

An exodus is afoot in Aotearoa New Zealand.  

From March 2020, as part of the Covid-19 response that High Court found more-or-less legal in Grounded Kiwis Group Incorporated v Minister of Health [2022] NZHC 832, travel in and out of New Zealand has been severely restricted.  

These restrictions had wide-ranging consequences. Among others, it ended a tradition in New Zealand of junior lawyers absconding for bigger and more glamorous jurisdictions abroad—usually, London. Only a concomitant and fortuitous avocado glut headed off the social unrest this situation might otherwise have fuelled. 

For senior lawyers in New Zealand, times had never been so good. Bundles had never been so well bundled. Discovery never better discovered. Submissions never more footnoted (and the jurisprudence of the Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan never more invoked). New Zealand law improved as senior lawyers simply did less. By no accident was it in July of last year that the Supreme Court was finally able to rationalise an approach to extrinsic evidence and implied terms in contractual interpretation (in Bathurst Resources Ltd v L&M Coal Holdings [2021] NZSC 85).  

But now New Zealand’s borders have reopened to the world. And after what is almost a whole career in millennial-lawyer years, normal service has resumed. 29-year-old solicitors now confidently discuss the merits of various future London employers. Armed with their bible—rollonfriday.com—they earnestly debate Slaughter & May’s diversity policy and Clifford Chance’s commitment to pro bono work. Rumours circulate about young British lawyers themselves. Do they drink Costa Coffee by choice? Can they really work remotely from La Folie Douce (Courchevel) in February? Is it true that some of them—dare it even be said aloud—own real property?  

What had, but a year ago, been a generously leveraged model of law-firm partnership has crashed and halted. Time and energy that might otherwise have been devoted to understanding the FII Group litigation, or ghost-writing jurisdiction updates for Inn magazines, have been diverted to the task of making spurious claims to British ancestry visas. The most popular search on New Zealand law firm servers currently is ‘Rightmove: Shepherd’s Bush’ (or, on the servers of more daring cohorts: ‘Rightmove: Hammersmith’). 

These lawyers, of course, have previous Antipodean jurisprudential giants to whom they can aspire;  those who, fresh from the colonies, have marched the common law and English society forward.  One need look no further than Brisbanite Dick Atkin, Lord Cooke of Thorndon in Wellington, or, most recently, Brendon McCullum.  

So, soon they will arrive on your shores, briefed by our government dutifully to give ‘Brexit opportunities’ as the reason for visit on arrival at Heathrow. Advised not, in this auspicious year, inadvertently to refer to any international football tournament played since 1966; or suggest that unjust enrichment is, at best, merely a helpful framework for analysis, rather than evidencing any normative legal principle. 

Please look after them. They will not know your customs. They will need to be reminded that ‘pants’ means underwear, and no one really shops at Waitrose. They will be strangers to cost-management orders and TUPE. But they are some of our best and brightest. And, in a not-too-distant year, when they are older, richer, wiser, and worldly, we would dearly love them back. 

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