2025 Gender Equality Charter Survey – Supplementary Report
The New Zealand Bar Association | Ngā Ahorangi Motuhake o Te Ture has welcomed the release by the New Zealand Law Society of the 2025 Gender Equality Charter Survey – Supplementary Report, which provides additional analysis and context to the Summary Report published in late 2025. The Supplementary Report draws on responses from 128 legal workplaces across the profession and offers deeper insight into how Charter signatories are progressing against the Charter commitments.
The NZBA has played an active role in the development of the Gender Equality Charter’s approach to equitable briefing, working with the New Zealand Law Society on the 2022 revision of Charter Commitment 5, which encourages organisations to adopt a voluntary target that women receive at least 50% of external instructions for significant matters.
One area of focus for the Association is Charter Commitment 5: adopting equitable briefing and instruction practices. The report notes that while many organisations instruct external counsel infrequently (with the exception of in‑house teams), those that do are increasingly taking deliberate steps to brief women lawyers more equitably. These steps include adopting the Charter’s voluntary target that women receive at least 50% of external instructions for significant matters, prioritising women when selecting counsel, providing gender‑balanced shortlists to clients, and embedding equitable briefing expectations into internal policies.
Where organisations are tracking briefing data, the majority report that women already receive at least half of external instructions. However, only about one‑third of organisations that brief externally currently track this data, so this figure reflects measured outcomes, not the whole cohort. Further, among organisations that do brief externally (i.e. those that brief regularly or occasionally):
- 39% of organisations that regularly brief externally have adopted the 50% target
- 42% of organisations that occasionally brief externally have adopted the 50% target
Seventy-eight percent of public‑sector in‑house legal teams instruct external counsel regularly. 75% of private‑sector in‑house legal teams instruct external counsel regularly. 45% of law firms rarely or never instruct external counsel, and a further 48% do so only occasionally. See Charter Commitment 5, Question 5A, page 16 of the Supplementary Report.