Women Lead NZ Courts But Not the Lectern: Lethbridge on the Gap

Women hold 57.5% of New Zealand practising certificates, yet only 26% of Supreme Court lead counsel appearances — and a former Law Society president says the private briefing market, not the profession's pipeline, explains the distance between those numbers.

Jacque Lethbridge, who led the New Zealand Law Society in 2022 and now heads dispute resolution at Martelli McKegg, told LawFuel the change since she made partner at Grove Darlow in 2012 has been "enormous". It has also stopped short of one specific room. "I am often still the only woman in the room in large scale commercial litigation cases," she said, "other than now the judges."

Why the survey numbers mislead

The Auckland Women Lawyers' Association survey, which Lethbridge supports, counts women full-equity partners as a share of all partners rather than as a share of the equity partnership itself. That denominator choice matters. A firm with a large salaried tier looks worse on ownership even where women hold most of the equity.

At Martelli McKegg, women are a majority of equity partners — a fact the AWLA method would not show. Lethbridge still backs the survey. "I think its important to encourage the AWLA survey and also acknowledge the 'gateway' effect of being made a salaried partner to start with," she said.

She sees the salaried tier as a working mechanism, not a consolation prize. "Salaried partnership can act as a helpful gateway into partnership that removes barriers like obsessive focus on a business case to initially be made a partner," she said. The partner title makes it easier to build a client base, which in turn feeds the business case for equity. Equity ownership, she insists, must remain the focus.

The national picture is flat. The 2026 ALPIMA-adjacent ALPMA/Fluid Legal Recruitment survey puts women at 54% of salaried partners but 40% of equity partners, a split described as largely unchanged for two years. Law Society figures for June 2026 record women at 57.5% of lawyers but 43% of partners and directors. The Gender Equality Charter summary report found women's share of equity partnerships at signatory firms still below 40%.

Takeaway: the profession solved headcount; ownership remains roughly a forty-percent story.

What happened at the bench but not the bar

Women now lead all three senior courts. Chief Justice Dame Helen Winkelmann heads the judiciary; Justice Christine French has been President of the Court of Appeal since November 2024; Justice Sally Fitzgerald succeeded Justice Susan Thomas as Chief High Court Judge in December 2023.

Counsel have not kept pace. The New Zealand Bar Association's gender ratio report, released in March 2025 and covering 2012 to 2023, found women were 30% of lead counsel in the Court of Appeal and 26% in the Supreme Court over the latest four years. The Association found no improvement on earlier reviews. Remove Crown Law, which adopted an equitable briefing policy in 2009, and the figures fall to 22% and 16% — roughly one woman at the lectern every six Supreme Court cases.

Lethbridge is measured in her diagnosis. "I cannot help but think gender bias in instruction must be an issue," she said. She is equally clear she cannot point to it in her own practice, where work comes from direct client instructions, reverse briefs, partner referrals and conflict work.

The 2025 Gender Equality Charter supplementary report found only 37% of signatories had adopted the voluntary target of sending women half of external instructions. Only about a third of those briefing externally tracked the numbers. A target nobody adopts, measured by almost nobody, produces exactly what the Bar Association keeps finding.

Takeaway: the gap now lives in briefing decisions, and almost no one counts those.

What would actually shift the dial

Lethbridge points to firms' internal control over who leads litigation. In her team, a significant share of litigation is led by women, and juniors appearing in the senior courts, including as second chair, get a speaking role. Two recent Court of Appeal matters illustrate the practice: in one, a woman from her team led with a male second chair; in the other, a woman second chair argued part of the appeal alongside senior male counsel.

She is not an outlier. Kirsten Massey heads Russell McVeagh's litigation practice and was named New Zealand Lawyer of the Year at the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific 2026 awards. Sophie East heads Bell Gully's litigation practice. Nina Blomfield leads litigation at Simpson Grierson, where Jania Baigent becomes Chair in January 2027. At the bar, Sarah Armstrong, Victoria Casey, Miriam Dean, and recent silks Janette Campbell and Polly Pope lead a growing cohort.

Her proposal is a discrete annual power list of senior women in commercial litigation, measured by what directories mostly ignore: lead counsel appearances in senior courts, leadership of significant commercial matters, and direct client instructions. "The more avenues we provide for women undertaking significant commercial litigation to be profiled must help in shifting that dial further," she said.

Clients and instructing solicitors decide who stands up. On the Bar Association's numbers, they are deciding much as they did twelve years ago.