New Zealand lawyers in numbers
14,567 lawyers with a New Zealand address were on the NZ Law Society register when we read it on 11 November 2026. 3,935 of them (27%) list at least one area of practice, and 3,711 (25.5%) work in-house. The tables below and the CSV files are counts only: no names and nothing about any individual.
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit "LawyerFinder NZ, from the NZ Law Society register" and link to this page.
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| By region (CSV) | Lawyers, practising certificates by type, in-house lawyers, lawyers listing any area, and section members, per region. |
| By region and area of practice (CSV) | Lawyers listing each area of practice, per region. A lawyer listing three areas counts once in each. |
| By role (CSV) | Lawyers by the first role their register entry names (partner, director, employee and so on). |
By region
| Region | Lawyers | List an area | In-house |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 6,526 | 1,656 | 1,493 |
| Wellington | 3,075 | 489 | 1,458 |
| Canterbury | 1,749 | 588 | 272 |
| Waikato | 817 | 300 | 139 |
| Bay of Plenty | 643 | 235 | 109 |
| Otago | 518 | 197 | 74 |
| Hawke's Bay | 245 | 97 | 48 |
| Northland | 226 | 86 | 21 |
| Nelson | 210 | 72 | 24 |
| Taranaki | 141 | 55 | 22 |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 130 | 58 | 18 |
| Southland | 126 | 48 | 10 |
| Gisborne | 76 | 24 | 16 |
| Marlborough | 61 | 22 | 6 |
| West Coast | 21 | 6 | 1 |
| Tasman | 3 | 2 | 0 |
Practising certificates and roles
| Practising certificate | Lawyers |
|---|---|
| Barrister & Solicitor | 12,701 (87.2%) |
| Barrister | 1,813 (12.4%) |
| No current practising certificate | 53 (0.4%) |
| Role on the register | Lawyers |
|---|---|
| Partner | 1,576 (10.8%) |
| Director | 1,679 (11.5%) |
| Shareholder | 59 (0.4%) |
| Sole Practitioner | 702 (4.8%) |
| Barrister | 1,511 (10.4%) |
| Employee | 5,327 (36.6%) |
| In-house Lawyer | 3,711 (25.5%) |
| No role listed | 2 (0%) |
Areas of practice listed
The 12 areas listed most often. The full list, by region, is in the CSV.
| Area of practice | Lawyers listing it |
|---|---|
| Property | 1,776 |
| Family | 1,414 |
| Company/Commercial | 829 |
| Trusts and Estates | 718 |
| Civil Litigation | 646 |
| Employment | 505 |
| Criminal | 455 |
| Bank/Finance | 289 |
| Administrative/Public | 248 |
| Mediation | 223 |
| Immigration | 209 |
| Intellectual Property | 202 |
Practice areas are self-selected by each lawyer and indicate the work they are willing to take on. The New Zealand Law Society does not accredit areas of practice.
Law Society section members
2,437Property Law and 1,645Family Law Section members. Lists by region: Law Society section members.
Section membership is shown on the NZ Law Society register. It is membership of a Law Society section, not an area of practice, an accreditation or a specialism, and says nothing about the quality of a lawyer's work.
Method and limits
We read every lawyer's public entry on the NZ Law Society register (17,720 entries, 11 November 2026). 16,488 were on the register; 1,232 were no longer found. These counts cover lawyers with a New Zealand address in their entry; lawyers based overseas are not included. Region comes from the address on the register entry. Role is the first one an entry names.
Areas of practice are chosen by each lawyer and most lawyers list none, so area counts show who lists an area, not who does that work. Counts are of register entries, not of firms' staff, and change as the register changes.
The register belongs to the NZ Law Society; these tables are our counts of it. LawyerFinder is not affiliated with the NZ Law Society. More on our sources: data and sources.