LawFuel Power List Identifies The 50 Most Powerful Lawyers In New Zealand

LawFuel Media has released its 2025 LawFuel Power List, naming the 50 lawyers whose decisions most shape legislation, regulation, prosecutions and billiondollar deals in New Zealand. The list is positioned as an authoritative snapshot of where real legal power sits in 2025 rather than a traditional popularity or profile ranking.

SolicitorGeneral tops 2025 Power List

SolicitorGeneral Una Jagose retains the number one ranking on the 2025 LawFuel Power List, reflecting an outgoing tenure that has reshaped the relationship between Crown Law, the executive and the wider public legal system. Despite announcing her departure in February 2026 and facing criticism from abuse in care survivors, the List notes that her institutional footprint, precedents and senior appointments continue to exert gravitational influence across the state legal system.

Women driving structural legal power

Women hold 22 of the 50 Power List places and six of the top 10 positions, signalling what LawFuel describes as a “quiet recalibration” of where serious legal power resides. Senior figures such as SFO chief executive Karen Chang, Commerce Commission deputy chair Anne Callinan, FMA enforcement head Margot Gatland, Chief Parliamentary Counsel Cassie Nicholson and IRD Chief Tax Counsel Michelle Redington are highlighted as lawyers whose daytoday decisions determine prosecutions, market structure, tax risk and industry survival.

New KCs and a generational shift

The 2025 List underscores a generational changing of the guard, with a growing cohort of recentlyappointed KCs now handling the inquiries, regulatory litigation and complex disputes that define modern practice. Names such as Tiana Epati KC, Christine Meechan KC and Simon Foote KC are cited as emblematic of a new bar leadership operating where commercial disputes become constitutional issues, criminal law overlaps with regulation and public inquiries become careerdefining mandates.

Regulators and “quiet power” eclipse courtroom profile

LawFuel’s methodology gives significant weight to roles with statutory power, budgetary control and agendasetting influence, often elevating regulators and behindthescenes drafters above more visible courtroom advocates. The List places agency heads, legislative architects and Crown prosecutors alongside leading silks, reflecting an assessment that the power to draft rules, approve prosecutions and sign off enforcement strategies frequently outweighs headlinegrabbing trial victories.

Old guard still influential but sharing space

Longstanding courtroom heavyweights – including figures such as Jim Farmer KC, Jack Hodder KC and former AttorneyGeneral Chris Finlayson KC – remain on the List as active practitioners whose decades of highlevel advocacy and negotiation still command premium mandates. However, LawFuel notes that these senior statespeople now share the stage with a rising generation of investigators, regulators and commercial litigators whose practices are built around inquiries, class actions and regulatory risk rather than purely traditional litigation.

How LawFuel defines “power” in law

LawFuel describes the Power List as a rigorously worked editorial assessment that focuses on who “actually matters when outcomes are determined” rather than on branding, social media presence or firm size. Key factors include institutional authority (such as SolicitorGeneral and agency heads), courtroom results that reshape industries, regulatory and legislative design work, control of crisis mandates, proximity to Cabinet and ministers, and the reputation networks that ensure decisionmakers listen when these lawyers speak.

LawFuel is the pre-eminent New Zealand law news network, published since 2001 on law firms and lawyers in New Zealand, the United States, United Kingdom and Australia with a focus on law firm changes, marketing, legal tech trends and about lawyers who are making waves in the profession.

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