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Inside the employee-centred programs behind the best law firms in Australia and New Zealand to work for
What does it take to be named one of the best law firms to work for in Australia and New Zealand? For the 32 firms recognised in Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer’s 2026 5-Star Employers of Choice report, the answer is not a single template. Now in its 11th year, the report opened nominations in April 2026, inviting firms across Australia and New Zealand to detail their initiatives across 11 areas the research team considers critical to a positive employee experience – from remuneration and career progression to health and wellbeing, building on last year’s report on the best law firms to work for in Australia and New Zealand.
The winning firms range from Blackwood Family Lawyers, a 26-person Victorian boutique, to Dentons, part of a global network with more than 630 staff in its Australian arm alone. What unites them is not size, structure or even geography, but a willingness to take their own approach to staff experience seriously enough to measure, refine and defend it. This report profiles five of the region’s top legal employers in ANZ whose 2026 initiatives stood out, then examines what the broader cohort reveals about the state of employee experience in the ANZ legal sector.
Legal employers across Australia and New Zealand are contending with a talent market reshaped by artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, a steady outflow of New Zealand lawyers to Australia and rising employee expectations around flexibility. Data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) employer and industry pay gap explorer shows the legal industry’s average gender pay gap remains a persistent challenge industry-wide, a backdrop against which some of the best law firms in NZ and Australia, such as Dentons and Maddocks, report gaps well below sector averages.
Lisa Gray, founder and partner at Tyler Wren in New Zealand, says the firms lawyers rate most highly as employers of choice differ sharply depending on seniority and life stage. Lawyers targeting top-tier firms, she says, are typically chasing strong partner relationships and earlier exposure to high-quality work, alongside social-value signals such as parental leave and return-to-work support, while those considering smaller firms prioritise feeling like a valued part of a team. Across the board, she identifies work-from-home flexibility as the benefit New Zealand and Australian lawyers consistently rank highest, provided firms back it with the right tools and processes rather than treating it as a policy checkbox.
On the trans-Tasman talent drain, Gray notes the pattern has been building since at least 2022, driven partly by a flat London legal market redirecting outbound New Zealand lawyers towards Australia instead, where some employers now offer packages including extended remote-work weeks and paid return flights to New Zealand. She adds that firms retaining staff most successfully tend to keep genuine, judgement-free conversations going about lawyers’ career plans rather than treating relocation talk as a loyalty problem.
Sam Lindsay, director and search partner at Chisholm Clarke, agrees that local employers are fighting an uphill battle against lawyers’ “inherent desire to travel,” and suggests the more realistic strategy is building firms lawyers want to return to once “the travel itch has been scratched” rather than trying to out-compete Australian salaries directly.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives were a recurring theme across this year’s nominations, though firms increasingly frame them as embedded business practice rather than standalone programs – a pattern Gray says reflects New Zealand’s legal sector generally, where she describes diversity commitments as close to a given rather than a differentiator firms actively compete on. New Zealand’s own gender pay gap data, tracked by the New Zealand Law Society’s gender pay gap resource for the legal profession, shows a persistent hourly rate gap for female lawyers even as the national gender pay gap narrows.
Several winners also pointed to AI’s early but accelerating impact on how junior lawyers are trained. Lindsay describes AI adoption in New Zealand as having “accelerated significantly,” with firms using tools across research, document review and drafting, though he notes a degree of justified caution given how much remains unknown about the technology. Gray goes further, warning that lawyers with zero to two years’ experience will need to develop relationship-building and client-facing skills more quickly than prior cohorts, as AI increasingly absorbs the research and transactional work that once formed the bulk of junior legal training – a shift she says is already pushing some newly qualified lawyers towards regional practices less exposed to AI-driven change, a trend also reflected in Key Media’s 2026 survey of legal technology adoption across Australia and New Zealand.
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On burnout, Lindsay cautions against treating it as a simple firm-versus-lawyer issue. “Sometimes lawyers get in their own way, sometimes firms demand too much,” he says. Lindsay and Gray agree the firms making genuine progress are the ones front-footing structural issues – Lindsay points to firms actively monitoring capacity and encouraging annual leave, while Gray highlights firms that survey staff directly and tailor flexibility arrangements to individual circumstances rather than applying one blanket policy.
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Against this backdrop, the 5-Star Employers of Choice methodology asked firms to provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence of their performance as workplaces – self-reported data the ALW/NZL research team then reviewed to determine the final list of 32.
Norling Law’s philosophy starts from a rejection of what chief operating officer Glenn Marvin calls the legal industry’s default habits: “long hours, do big numbers, grind, grind, grind.” Instead, he says the firm has focused on “how can we be as productive as possible while still giving you a life and a future” – a strategic choice he traces back to 20 years of cross-industry strategy work, which taught him that “one of the biggest contributing factors to high-performing teams is alignment on values.”
The results speak for themselves: revenue growth of 39%, profit growth of 60% and a 44% increase in client engagements over the past year, alongside 100% staff retention over the last two years. Norling Law has also broken from convention on pay and progression. The firm does not operate a fixed pay-review cycle; as Marvin puts it, “There isn’t really a cycle – there shouldn’t be a cycle. Is somebody delivering over and above value?” Solicitor pay is not tied directly to fees billed – those heavily involved in non-billable client-onboarding work “can earn as much, if not more than others, because they are a big part of the engine of the business.” Annual performance reviews dedicate roughly 80% of discussion time to values-based reflection, with revenue treated as “almost a secondary consideration.”
Marvin runs quarterly one-on-one personal development plan meetings with every staff member, describing the cadence as one of the “little one-percenters that make the big difference between ‘I’m just stuck in work mode versus now’s a natural time for me to reflect.’” The firm has just released a career progression pathway document spelling out, level by level, the technical and behavioural expectations required to advance, and Marvin is explicit about why: “Why, if somebody’s ready and they’re performing and they’re doing great work, should they wait for an annual cycle?” A parallel progression framework is being rolled out for administrative staff following a quarter-long specialisation-mapping exercise covering pathways into legal executive, office or practice manager and a new client care specialist role.
International recruitment has also shaped the firm’s growth. Norling Law has sponsored five overseas solicitors to relocate to New Zealand, notably from South Africa, becoming an accredited employer under New Zealand Immigration Services in the process. Marvin is candid that talent, not altruism, drives the strategy: “I would love to think that it was all about helping people out... [but] the reality is, we’re a business, we’re commercially minded, and we’re looking for the best talent. Wherever we can find that best talent, we will go.”
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Q: What’s the biggest driver of Norling Law’s culture?
A: One of the biggest contributing factors to high-performing teams is alignment on values. We are massive believers in the purpose, which is to guide people through times of uncertainty.
Q: How does the firm approach performance reviews differently?
A: We spend 80% of our time talking about those reflections regarding what’s going well and what I could be doing better. The revenue piece is almost a secondary consideration.
Q: Why do you think Norling Law is performing so well right now?
A: When it comes down to it, it’s really just more of a reflection of a broader strategy of focusing on top talent, having really good people doing really good work and providing them with systems, structure and process to do it.
Dentons Australia has achieved a median gender pay gap of zero – a result that human resources director Ben Carter attributes to sustained, multiyear leadership focus rather than a single recent initiative. “The partners at the firm have focused on it and been aware of it” over many years, he says, pointing to the firm’s female chair and female chief operating officer as visible proof it can be done. Gender-neutral parental leave, introduced a couple of years ago, was a deliberate structural choice – “I think that’s a really key factor to take away any stigma around female careers because it’s the same for both” – while the firm has pursued an even male-female split across every role type. As Carter puts it, “Whether that could be a support role, whether that’s a chair role or a senior partner role – all those roles should be gender neutral,” including actively recruiting men into roles such as legal practice assistant that have traditionally skewed female.
The firm’s approach to DE&I has shifted towards what Carter calls a culture of universal inclusion: “Everyone’s got a voice, everyone has got a story,” rather than events targeted at specific demographic subgroups. That reframing reportedly lifted DE&I-linked event attendance from around 20% up to 80–90%. “When everyone feels like, okay, this is for me as well, then you get a really good response,” Carter says. Dentons also maintains a long-standing Indigenous community engagement program predating Carter’s own tenure, including an annual Indigenous cadet and clerkship scheme, an annual staff visit to Central Australia supporting outback community education and a formal reconciliation action plan – something Carter describes as “in Dentons’ DNA for a long, long time.”
On flexibility, Dentons has avoided a hard return-to-office mandate in favour of “principles or kind of indications,” with Carter reporting that roughly 89% of staff favour the firm’s hybrid model. “We haven’t had to push,” he says, crediting genuine desire to connect in person over any mandate – a dynamic he links directly back to gender pay equity since flexibility “is critical to support caregivers” of all genders. Internally, 87% of the firm’s leaders spoke at an internal event in the past year, a deliberate effort, Carter says, to ensure “everyone sees the variety and diversity of our leadership” rather than showcasing the same figures repeatedly.
On AI, Dentons has adopted tools including Legora and Microsoft Copilot, but Carter is clear that “it’s not just about the tools; it’s about the people... how they adapt to the technology, how we support them, how we empower them using it.” He frames the firm’s AI journey as an active opportunity rather than a threat: “You go through a career, nothing much happens, and suddenly it’s like, ‘Okay, this is something different.’”
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Q: How has Dentons achieved a zero median gender pay gap?
A: One part of making it a great environment for women is that we offer parental leave for male and female staff – it’s gender-neutral, so it’s the same policy for everyone. I think that’s a really key factor in taking away any stigma around female careers, because it’s the same for both.
Q: What changed to lift DE&I event attendance so significantly?
A: We’ve really pivoted to making our events genuinely inclusive – everyone’s welcome. It’s not particularly about one subtype of our population, but everyone. When people feel like, okay, this is for me as well, you get a really good response.
Q: What’s Dentons’ approach to AI adoption?
A: It’s not just about the tools; it’s about the people – how they adapt to the technology, how we support them and how we empower them using it. My overall view is that we absolutely need to embrace it. It’s fun, it’s something new, it’s different.
At Blackwood Family Lawyers, leadership is built on what the firm calls its “5 Cs framework”: caring about people, staying genuinely connected to them, coaching them, cultivating their growth and celebrating them when they succeed. It’s a philosophy the firm’s general manager May Hanna says is lived daily – every leader at the firm reportedly knows staff members’ children’s and pets’ names, what’s stressing them that week and how they like to spend their spare time, reinforced by leaders walking the office each morning and evening to greet every team member personally.
That intimacy extends to career progression. When Principal Caroline Khoury told the firm she wanted to keep progressing while working part-time with young children, the firm’s response was not whether that was possible but how to make it work – continuing work-from-home arrangements post-promotion, shifting long-standing management meeting times to suit her family commitments and assigning additional administrative support. Blackwood recorded five promotions across its legal and operations teams in the past financial year, a figure the firm attributes to growing its own people rather than hiring externally; promotions are based on six-monthly readiness check-ins rather than a fixed timeline.
On pay equity, the firm describes gender pay equality as a “baseline, not aspirational” standard, with annual reviews conducted by principals and Hanna using consistent benchmarking criteria for every team member at a given level. The firm has also sponsored eight lawyers to attend the industry’s May Intensive training program and runs a dedicated Pathway to Partnership program addressing the business, cultural and risk-management skills that practising law alone doesn’t teach.
On work-life balance, the firm relies on leadership noticing signs of overwork – such as regular weekend work or unusually high billings – rather than a formal escalation trigger, paired with a capacity system that allows the firm to turn away work when lawyers are already stretched.
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Q: How would you sum up the “5 Cs framework” in one sentence?
A: It means we care about our people, stay genuinely connected to them, coach them, help cultivate their growth and celebrate them properly when they do well.
Q: What’s something Blackwood does around leadership that most firms your size don’t?
A: Every one of our leaders knows what’s happening in our people’s lives: their children’s and pets’ names, what’s stressing them out that week, what they’re excited about and how they like to spend their spare time.
Q: How do you actually intervene when you see someone overworking?
A: “It’s mostly leadership noticing, and for a firm of our size, that works better than relying on a formal trigger – someone regularly working weekends, sending emails late at night or consistently recording unusually high billings would prompt a conversation.
Maddocks’ 2026 recognition centres on two connected bets: a major overhaul of legal training and firm-wide AI capability building. Shannon Lyndon-Lugg, director of people and culture at Maddocks in Melbourne, says the firm’s engagement score sits 11 percentage points above the Australian average and has improved since 2023, crediting deliberate investment in leadership and legal capability, AI, career development, and wellbeing and inclusion.
The centrepiece of that investment is the Legal Excellence Project, launched in March 2025, which replaces traditional classroom-style training with “real-matter, activity-based learning.” In the firm’s new Graduate Induction Program, for example, participants work through a realistic client scenario using the same documents and challenges they would encounter in practice, then unpack the exercise as a group – an approach Lyndon-Lugg says produces stronger engagement because it mirrors what actually happens on a matter, rather than sitting alongside the business as a separate exercise.
AI capability building runs in parallel. Maddocks reports a 96% completion rate on its AI Fundamentals module, with lawyers increasingly using AI to complete first-pass work such as chronology preparation and document review – freeing up time for testing assumptions and strategic thinking rather than assembling information. Lyndon-Lugg acknowledges internal resistance was real, with some staff excited by the technology and others more hesitant, but says the firm chose to address concerns directly: investing in training, establishing governance and being explicit that AI is not a replacement for legal judgement.
On pay equity, Maddocks reports an average total remuneration gender pay gap of approximately 1% for its legal workforce, against a stated legal industry average of 14.9%, and has secured its 21st consecutive WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation. Regular recognition of staff contribution has climbed from 56% to 77% between 2021 and 2025, a shift Lyndon-Lugg links to strengthened feedback conversations and improved leadership capability over several years.
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Q: What’s behind Maddocks’ above-average engagement score?
A: We have made deliberate investments in leadership and legal capability, AI, career development, and wellbeing and inclusion to create a culture where people can enjoy and excel in doing high-quality work.
Q: How does the Legal Excellence Project differ from traditional legal training?
A: Rather than being told how to do legal work, they are required to work through the problem, make decisions, discuss options with peers and justify their approach. These lessons mirror what happens on a matter far more closely than traditional classroom-style training.
Q: What’s the single clearest evidence of why Maddocks earned this recognition in 2026?
A: I’d have to say our Legal Excellence Project, because it reflects how we think about our people and our future. Investing in people today so they can achieve what they’ve set out to do tomorrow.
Holding Redlich’s 2026 recognition is anchored by two figures: an 11.6% gender pay gap against the firm’s own analysis of a 17.9% industry average and 10 of 12 new partners appointed since July 2024 being women. National managing partner Troy Lewis attributes the sustained gap outperformance not to a single result but to a long-term focus on creating sustainable pathways for women into senior legal and business services leadership, alongside remuneration decisions built on fair and equitable criteria.
The firm points to named, verifiable examples of its succession planning in action. Grace Wimberley joined as a research clerk in 2014 and was made partner in 2025; Jeanne Vallade began as an intern in 2016 and was also made partner in 2025; Alana Giles built her practice over 18 years before her 2024 partnership; and Sarah Butler progressed from summer clerk in 2010 to partner in 2024. Each was selected for the firm’s 12-month Special Counsel Leadership Program, which prepares senior lawyers for partnership through leadership development, business planning and partner-led mentoring.
Flexibility at the senior level is a deliberate focus: as of July 2026, Holding Redlich reports that 83.52% of its partners and managers work flexibly, a figure the firm says demonstrates flexibility and career progression can coexist rather than trade off against each other. On parental leave, the firm describes a gradual shift towards men taking a more active caregiving role: three male employees took primary carer leave in the past 12 months, down from seven in the 12 months prior to that (the period in which male employees accounted for 21.2% of all primary-carer parental leave taken). The firm notes this figure will naturally fluctuate year to year.
The firm’s International Women’s Day panel, featuring four senior barristers discussing their career journeys, was cited internally as generating particularly strong staff engagement and feedback, driving conversations about mentorship that continued well after the event itself.
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Q: What’s driven your gender pay gap outperformance against the industry average?
A: Our focus has never been on achieving a one-off result. Instead, we have concentrated on creating sustainable pathways for women to progress into senior legal and business services leadership roles, while ensuring remuneration decisions are based on fair and equitable criteria.
Q: Is there one promotion that illustrates your succession planning in action?
A: Each of these women was identified as a high-potential future leader and selected to participate in our 12-month Special Counsel Leadership Program, which prepares senior lawyers for partnership through leadership development, business planning, mentoring, partner-led learning opportunities and exposure to the business of running a law firm.
Q: Has flexible working ever created friction with client service expectations?
A: The key is clear communication, strong teamwork and a focus on outcomes rather than physical presence. Clients increasingly value responsive, high-performing teams rather than measuring service by time spent in the office.
Beyond the five profiled firms, the full 32-firm cohort of top Australian and New Zealand law firm workplaces illustrates just how differently “employer of choice” can look in practice. Winners range from Blackwood Family Lawyers’ 26 staff to Mills Oakley’s 1,180.
At the lowest end of the turnover scale, BDC Law – the cohort’s smallest firm by headcount, with seven staff – and Webb Henderson each reported 0% staff turnover. Firm size shows no clear relationship to these outcomes; some of the cohort’s smallest firms report both the lowest and, in isolated cases, higher turnover figures, reinforcing that firm scale alone does not predict staff retention.
Engagement measurement approaches also varied significantly across the cohort, from percentage-based engagement scores to Net Promoter Score-style metrics to narrative survey findings – a reminder that firms are still converging on how, rather than whether, to measure staff sentiment. A related pattern shows up in Key Media’s 2026 report on work-life balance among top Australian law firm workplaces, which found more than two-thirds of legal professionals across a 181-firm survey believe the industry does not offer a healthy work-life balance, despite most firms reporting their own employees do enjoy it.
Several of this year’s leading ANZ law firm employers flagged AI adoption as the clearest near-term test of workplace culture. Maddocks and Dentons are both investing heavily in structured AI capability-building, while Norling Law’'s Glenn Marvin and Holding Redlich’s Troy Lewis both pointed to career progression frameworks as a way to keep development transparent as roles change. Firms that can demonstrate AI is complementing, rather than replacing, junior skill development are likely to have a retention advantage over the next 12–24 months.
Gender pay equity also remains an active area of investment rather than a solved problem, even among this year's strongest performers. Both Dentons and Holding Redlich describe their results as the product of continual reinvestment rather than a fixed target achieved and then set aside – a distinction likely to matter as Workplace Gender Equality Agency reporting requirements outlined in its Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report continue to sharpen industry-wide scrutiny.
What connects Norling Law’s radical departure from billable-hour pay, Dentons’ zero median gender pay gap, Blackwood’s intensely personal small-firm culture, Maddocks’ AI-integrated legal training and Holding Redlich’s female partnership pipeline is not a shared program or policy.
It’s a willingness to measure what matters to their own people and to keep refining it year over year. That’s the real throughline connecting this year’s best law firms to work for in Australia and New Zealand – not a formula to copy but a standard of follow-through that any firm, regardless of size, can hold itself to.
Q: What makes a firm one of the best law firms to work for in Australia and New Zealand?
A: The best law firms to work for in Australia and New Zealand combine measurable, employee-centred initiatives across areas such as remuneration, flexibility, career progression and wellbeing with genuine, demonstrated follow-through. In Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer’s 2026 5-Star Employers of Choice report, firms are assessed on documented achievements and staff outcomes, not policies alone.
Q: What is the 5-Star Employers of Choice list?
A: It’s an annual recognition program run by AL and NZL, now in its 11th year, identifying law firms and legal organisations across Australia and New Zealand that have introduced the most effective employee-centred programs over the preceding 12 months.
Q: Is there a minimum firm size to be eligible?
A: No – the 2026 nominations were open to all legal companies across Australia and New Zealand, with no minimum staff or lawyer count required.
Q: What common initiatives appeared most often among 2026 winners?
A: Flexible and hybrid work arrangements, structured career progression frameworks and early-stage AI capability-building programs featured prominently across this year's cohort, alongside continued investment in gender pay equity measures.
Q: How is AI adoption affecting legal workplace culture?
A: Several 2026 winners, including Maddocks and Dentons, reported significant investment in structured AI training for staff, with an emphasis on preserving junior lawyer skill development even as AI absorbs routine research and drafting tasks.
Q: Why do firms of such different sizes appear on the same list?
A: The methodology assesses firms against their own initiatives and achievements rather than ranking them against each other by size, meaning a seven-person boutique and a firm with hundreds of staff can both be recognised for excellence relative to their own scale and resources.
In April, Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer opened the nominations for the 11th 5-Star Employers of Choice list, which continues its tradition of spotlighting the law firms that most effectively looked out for their staff through employee-centred programs over the past 12 months.
The research team highlighted the following as key factors in positive employee experiences: remuneration, training and professional development, career progression, diversity and inclusion, access to technology and resources, communication, leadership, work-life balance, health and wellbeing, reward and recognition and recruitment. Firms were asked to list the initiatives they had in place as well as their achievements in these key areas.
The AL and NZL research team reviewed the entries, which consisted of both quantitative and qualitative information, to determine their performance as leading workplaces. A total of 32 firms were identified as 5-Star Employers of Choice.
