Meet the top female lawyers in Australia and New Zealand for 2026 and see how these Elite Women are reshaping legal leadership
| Key figure | Finding |
|---|---|
| Elite Women 2026 nomination survey, June 2026 (self-nominated winners who answered each question) | |
| 56% | In the June 2026 Elite Women nomination survey, 56% of self-nominated winners who answered said younger women lack enough female leaders to follow |
| 39% | Of self-nominated winners who answered, 39% believe they would have achieved more seniority or responsibility had they not been female |
| 34% | Of self-nominated winners who answered, 34% said their firm has no policy on equal pay for the same roles regardless of gender |
| The profession | |
| 37% | Women make up 56% of NSW solicitors but only 37% of private-practice partners and principals, according to the Law Society of NSW's Annual Profile of Solicitors in NSW 2025 |
| 43% | In New Zealand, women were 57.5% of all lawyers but held 43% of partner and director roles as at June 2026, according to New Zealand Law Society figures supplied for this report |
The top female lawyers in Australia and New Zealand face a partnership gap. Women are 56% of NSW solicitors but 37% of partners and principals, according to the Law Society of NSW’s Annual Profile of Solicitors in NSW 2025. In New Zealand, women are 57.5% of lawyers but 43% of partners and directors, according to June 2026 New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) figures supplied for this report.
The 105 women named in Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer’s Elite Women 2026 aren’t waiting for the pipeline to deliver. They are rebuilding the model of women in legal leadership from the inside – how teams are led, who gets heard in the room and what support looks like once a woman reaches the top.
The timing is pointed. On 13 September 2026, Mary Gaudron – the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia – died aged 83. She took her seat in 1987, appointed to the High Court at the age of 44.
Nearly 40 years on, women have reached a majority at the entry level of the profession on both sides of the Tasman, but not yet at the top.
A female majority hasn’t reached the top because structural barriers persist after graduation – carer obligations, unequal allocation of work, rigid working arrangements and briefing practices. Women are the majority of new lawyers in both countries, yet their share falls at partner level and on superior courts, according to Law Society of NSW, NZLS and judicial data from 2025–26.
Professor Diana Bowman, inaugural dean of the School of Law at RMIT University in Melbourne, sees the disconnect from both ends of the pipeline. Her law school is 60% female across its degree programs, she says; most of her academic staff are women and the majority of law deans across Australia are now female. Then the pattern flips.
“If we look at junior lawyers, they are predominantly female. And yet when we start to look at the higher echelons of law, whether that is judges, whether that is equity partners, there is a flip in terms of being male dominated,” Bowman says, “which suggests that many of the structural barriers still exist despite the fact now, for a number of years, we’ve actually been graduating more female lawyers than male lawyers.”
An equity partner owns a share of the firm and its profits, as distinct from a salaried partner, and it is at this level and on the senior bench that the gap is widest. Bowman points to carer obligations, for children and ageing parents alike, as the barrier that volume alone won’t shift. “Unless there is a massive shift in the market, that barrier is not going to change regardless of the number of females that we graduate from law school,” she says.
The NSW data backs her up. Only a quarter of female solicitors in private practice are principals of their firm, compared with 46% of men, according to the Law Society of NSW’s 2025 Annual Profile – even though women entered the profession at a ratio of 1.93 to one in the 12 months to 30 June 2025. Female solicitors also reported earning around $30,054 less than male colleagues on average, the same report found.
The age profile shows how the pipeline is shifting. Law Society of NSW practising certificate statistics at 30 June 2026 show women make up about 67% of NSW solicitors under 30 but about 18% of those over 70 – and about 38% of law practice principals.
The bench tells a similar story at the top. Women made up 47.3% of Australian judges and magistrates at 30 June 2025 – close to parity overall – according to the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration’s Judicial Gender Statistics 2025. In the superior courts, however, the figure falls to 42.7%, and on the Federal Court to 33.9%. New Zealand shows the same shape: women made up 49% of judges across its courts but 37.5% of the High Court bench, the same report found.
New Zealand’s profession has never been bigger, with provisional NZLS figures showing a record 18,018 lawyers practising as at 30 June 2026. Women made up 56.8% of the profession at 30 June 2025, according to the NZLS’s Snapshot of the Profession 2025, published in December 2025, rising to 57.5% by June 2026 on figures supplied for this report.
Katie Rusbatch, CEO of the NZLS in Wellington, says the gap is about access, not arrival. “While high numbers of women entering the profession reflects substantial progress, representation does not translate into equal access across leadership opportunities,” she says, pointing to limited flexible working arrangements and inequitable briefing and instruction practices – the way work is allocated to barristers and lawyers – as persistent barriers.
The gap is sharpest where ownership sits. The NZLS’s 2025 Gender Equality Charter survey summary report, published in December 2025, found women held 41% of senior legal roles in signatory law firms, up from 36% in 2023 – but the share of women equity partners remained below 40%.
Women's share of each profession or bench overall, compared with its most senior level
Elite Women 2026, Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer
| Group | Women's share overall and at senior level | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| NSW solicitorsAll solicitors v partners and principals | 56% overall37% at senior level | 19percentage-point gap |
| New Zealand lawyersAll lawyers v partners and directors | 57.5% overall43% at senior level | 14.5percentage-point gap |
| Australian judiciaryAll judges and magistrates v Federal Court | 47.3% overall33.9% at senior level | 13.4percentage-point gap |
| New Zealand judiciaryAll judges v High Court | 49% overall37.5% at senior level | 11.5percentage-point gap |
Sources: Law Society of NSW, Annual Profile of Solicitors in NSW 2025; New Zealand Law Society figures supplied for this report (June 2026); Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration, Judicial Gender Statistics 2025 (30 June 2025). Across Australian superior courts, women made up 42.7% of judges
The women on this year’s list feel it too. Of 39 self-nominated winners who answered the Elite Women 2026 nomination survey, run by Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer in June 2026, 22 (56%) said there was a lack of women leaders for younger women to follow, and 15 of 38 (39%) said they believed they would have achieved more seniority or responsibility had they not been female. On a separate question, 13 of 38 (34%) said their firm had no policy on equal pay for the same roles regardless of gender. Across all self-nominated entrants who answered, including winners, the pattern held: 65% said there was a lack of women leaders to follow, 36% believed they would have achieved more had they not been female and 30% said their firm had no equal-pay policy.
How the 2026 Elite Women answered compared with everyone who nominated themselves
Elite Women 2026, Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer
| Survey question | 2026 winners and all self-nominated entrants |
|---|---|
| Say there is a lack of women leaders for younger women to followWinners 9 points lower than all entrants | 2026 winners56% All entrants65% |
| Believe they would have achieved more seniority or responsibility if not femaleWinners 3 points higher than all entrants | 2026 winners39% All entrants36% |
| Say their firm has no policy on equal pay for the same roles regardless of genderWinners 4 points higher than all entrants | 2026 winners34% All entrants30% |
Source: Elite Women 2026 nomination survey, Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer, June 2026. Percentages are of self-nominated winners and entrants who answered each question; all entrants includes winners; differences are in percentage points
The 2026 Elite Women are changing how firms work by redesigning the structures around them. Samantha Gou of Holding Redlich in Sydney advocates for women’s promotion and sponsors juniors, Alissa Bell of McVeagh Fleming in Auckland opened governance to every staff cohort and Amanda Harrington of Pivotal Law Group in Melbourne built a NewLaw firm with profit-sharing for all staff.
The three work in different cities, practice areas and firm types – a national partnership, a growing Auckland firm and a Victorian startup. What links them is a drive to succeed and inspire others around them.
Samantha Gou is a partner at Holding Redlich in Sydney and an Accredited Specialist in property law with more than 15 years’ experience. Promoted in July 2025, she is one of the firm’s youngest partners and the only Asian female partner in its Sydney office.
Elite Women 2026 winner
Partner, Holding Redlich
Highlights
For Gou, the step up happened overnight. She joined Holding Redlich in 2021 and moved from special counsel to partner in July 2025.
“There was really no transition,” Gou says. “Like, it wasn’t kind of a gradual transition.”
The change was less about workload than responsibility. As a partner, she is now accountable not only for the matters she runs but for the careers of the people who run them with her – and she brings her juniors into client relationships early, so they build their own networks rather than borrowing hers.
Having worked at a number of firms, Gou built her style by watching the partners around her, taking what worked and noting what didn’t feel fair. She also knows that ambition isn’t fixed. “At one point in my career, I didn’t want to be a partner. So, I completely understand,” she says. “Being on a certain path doesn’t mean you can’t pivot and change your mind ... and that’s okay too.”
Gou’s property practice is anything but junior. Spanning transactions, complex leasing and land acquisitions, her recent work includes advising Frasers Property Australia on agreements to lease and subleases at ECQ Outlet, the final stage of Eastern Creek Quarter – a dedicated outlet shopping destination in Greater Western Sydney leasing to about 100 brands. She also advised The GPT Group on the renewal of ANZ’s Sydney headquarters lease at Liberty Place, covering 16 floors.
“Transactions of this scale and profile require not only deep technical expertise, but the ability to navigate competing commercial interests and deliver outcomes for sophisticated institutional clients,” she said in her nomination.
In her first year as partner, Doyle’s Guide 2027 named her a recommended lawyer for leasing law in NSW – the youngest lawyer recognised in that category, and the only Asian lawyer – and she was listed in Best Lawyers 2026 Ones to Watch for leasing and real property law. She also sits on the Law Society of NSW’s Specialist Accreditation Advisory Committee (Property Law), shaping the standards for property law accreditation in the state, and advocates for the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence in legal practice as a member of Holding Redlich’s AI in law working group.
But Gou is blunt that technical excellence isn’t what worries her. Promotion, in her experience, rarely lightens the load for women. “A lot of the female partners end up still doing their old job but doing their new job too,” she says. “I’ve seen that more females are actually just doing two jobs.”
The standards are also uneven. In her nomination, Gou mentioned that the same behaviour is read differently depending on who displays it.
“Women in the legal profession seem to almost be penalised for the same qualities that earn men respect,” she says. “A woman who is outspoken or direct or who speaks her mind is often described as difficult or ‘not knowing her place’ or being ‘too junior’ to have an opinion, even in a leadership role.”
Gou has tested how deep it runs. Pulling up the profiles of male and female lawyers at a random firm, she asked a junior female colleague whose view she would respect more if both said the same thing. The answer was the man – every time, including when the woman held the more senior title and a longer list of accolades. “There’s just that natural instinct to listen to the male, right?” Gou says.
Gou acts on it. When she noticed a female senior associate outside her team had been overlooked for promotion to special counsel while peers of similar experience moved up, she raised it at partner level, encouraged the associate to speak up, helped with her application and pushed for the promotion to be fast-tracked.
Gou also looks for people who haven’t yet imagined the next step for themselves. “It’s also about recognising that, hey, this particular person may not have thought that they would be good in that position,” she says. One admin assistant she and a colleague supported became a paralegal, then took their encouragement further. “In that particular example, she’s now studying to be a lawyer,” Gou says.
She is now a sponsor in the Property Council of Australia’s 500 Women in Property program for 2027 – a role she separates clearly from mentoring. “Sponsorship goes beyond mentoring – it means actively opening doors, advocating for the person you are sponsoring and using the networks you have built to create opportunity for others,” she says.
Q: How has becoming a partner changed the way you think about your role?
A: “It’s not just about getting my work done anymore, it’s about making sure that those under me also have opportunities to excel in their career and to achieve what they want to achieve in their career as well.”
Q: How do you make sure your team is treated fairly?
A: “It’s about having that fairness and balance and having the mind frame that you need to treat everyone equally, that you need to make sure everyone’s being given equal opportunities as everyone deserves the chance to show what they’re capable of.”
Q: What happens in your view to women’s voices in mixed group settings?
A: “What I have found was that if we were in a group setting, with males, whether it’s from the same firm or not, that’s when the females, including the female partners, would kind of end up fading into that background.”
Q: What still needs to change?
A: “While there’s that kind of support to put women in leadership roles, and I am seeing that, what I think still needs to happen is that support once they get there.”
Alissa Bell is a partner and chair of the board at McVeagh Fleming in Auckland, and the firm’s first female chair. A family and relationship property lawyer ranked pre-eminent in Doyle’s Guide, she has opened firm governance to every staff cohort and combines leadership with legal aid and law reform work.
Elite Women 2026 winner
Partner and Chair of the Board, McVeagh Fleming
Highlights
Bell came into law without a map. “I came from a family where nobody had been to university,” she says – an unusual background in a New Zealand profession where many lawyers have other lawyers in the family. “So, I didn’t have that innate knowledge of how a progression in a law career would work.”
What she did have were parents who told her there were no limits, and a clear sense that she wanted firm life rather than the bar. “I like the business side of law as well,” she says. She was working her way up through a small South Island firm when McVeagh Fleming approached her: its family law partner had left, and it wanted her to move to Auckland and build a team from scratch, with partnership on the table if it worked. “They’ve kind of given me a blank page,” Bell says.
It worked. She became a partner, then joined the board and was appointed chair. The firm has more than doubled in size during her time there, she says, and its family law practice holds first-tier status in Doyle’s Guide.
Bell has a phrase for the way many firms operate. “Law can be a little bit of a closed shop,” she says. “But I would much rather have everybody involved.”
As chair, she rewired how decisions get made. Steering committees now reach beyond the partnership and board, and every cohort – support staff, legal executives, solicitors, senior solicitors, associates and senior associates – meets quarterly with the general manager under the Chatham House Rule, meaning what is said can be used but not attributed to the person who said it. “Give us that feedback so that we can actually act on it,” Bell says.
Bell applies the same openness to wellbeing. She has built a network of trusted peers across the profession whom she meets regularly to talk through difficult matters, anonymously, and she has structured her team with a spread of experience levels so juniors always have someone to go to besides the boss.
“Vicarious trauma is definitely, definitely a thing,” she says – and in family litigation, where lawyers absorb clients’ worst moments, it comes with the territory. Normalising help, in her view, is part of the chair’s job rather than a side project.
Family litigation is confrontational by nature, and Bell says her view of success has shifted with experience. Early in a litigation career the focus is on winning; over time, she has learned to aim for outcomes that let families function afterwards – ideally, parents who can one day stand in the same photo at a family event. “It might not actually be the win for the client,” she says of a court judgment. “The win for the client might be compromising a little bit and being able to get on with their life.”
Bell also refuses to let commercial success crowd out access to justice. She handles duty lawyer work and family dispute resolution mediation, supports free legal clinics and acts as a court-appointed lawyer for children. As co-convenor of the Family Law Committee of The Law Association of New Zealand, she drafts submissions on law reform and engages with government and the judiciary on how the family justice system works in practice.
Bell’s profile now extends well beyond the firm. Over the past year, she facilitated panels at the UN Women Aotearoa New Zealand Women in Leadership Summit, selected through the leadership network Global Women, and spoke at the Ally Law 2026 Annual Global Conference on cross-border wealth and entity planning. She admits the recognition still surprises her. Looking at the summit’s speaker line-up, her first thought was, “How on earth is my name on that line-up?”
That is exactly why she thinks lists like this matter. Women leading firms was not something the profession celebrated when she was starting out. “It wasn’t something that was celebrated, and it wasn’t something that was seen as common,” Bell says. “The more you see it, the more you know that it’s possible.” Outside the law, she is a past president and current board member of the Zonta Club of Auckland, which advocates for women’s education and leadership.
Q: Did you feel barriers as a young lawyer?
A: “It certainly was a bit of a boys’ club when I started out ... I’ve always been keen to put myself forward ... if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you can do it.”
Q: How do you balance chairing the firm with running your own practice?
A: “It is a bit of a juggle, but I think like anything, if you find it rewarding, you make the time for it.”
Q: How do you make it safe for your team to ask for help?
A: “I think having those services available that deal with mental health, utilising them myself and telling my staff that I’m utilising them so that they know that there’s no stigma attached, I think that’s been really important.”
Q: Why keep legal aid work in a large firm?
A: “Despite the fact that we are a large law firm, it’s been a core thing for me that we continue to offer legal aid so that we can continue to help people in that way. You don’t have to purely take on private work to actually be successful.”
Amanda Harrington is principal of Pivotal Law Group in Collingwood, Melbourne, and a Law Institute of Victoria Accredited Specialist in commercial law. An insolvency litigator acting for creditors, she launched the NewLaw firm in August 2025 after five years as a partner, and is a finalist in the 2026 Australian Law Awards (Sole Practitioner).
Elite Women 2026 winner
Principal, Pivotal Law Group
Highlights
Harrington spent five years as a partner at a 35-year-old suburban firm she joined straight out of university before walking out to launch Pivotal. She opened more than 100 files and generated $430,000 in combined billing and work in progress in the firm’s first seven months, she said in her Elite Women 2026 nomination – growth that has fast-tracked plans to hire lawyers and support staff well ahead of her original two-year timeline.
“It’s been chaotic in a good way, but it has been like just immensely successful,” Harrington says. When she announced the firm on LinkedIn, she says, “People came flooding to say, ‘Oh, that’s great news. We’ve got some clients for you’.” The firm is a family effort in the early days – her brother built its website within days and her husband “backs me 300%.” Harrington is also a mother of two young children. Approaches from other firms since the launch haven’t tempted her. “I’m emotionally invested in this firm and I want to see where I can take it,” she says.
Harrington has built Pivotal Law Group as a NewLaw firm, a term for practices that break from the billable-hour, traditional partnership model. It uses partially fixed pricing and retainers, so clients can budget and act on legal problems before they escalate, and fully hybrid working to give lawyers flexibility.
Its most distinctive feature is a phantom stock arrangement open to all staff: a profit-share that mirrors the value of equity without transferring ownership. Rewards are tied to the firm’s collective success rather than individual billing targets, which encourages staff to grow the client base rather than simply lift fees on existing clients, Harrington said in her nomination. It also offers a stake to people who don’t want the stress or cost of traditional ownership.
Harrington’s values show up in the work she takes. Much of it is insolvency litigation for creditors – often retirees who lost superannuation in failed property investment schemes – including a speculative-basis recovery of about $4 million for creditors of one collapsed scheme. The work means “looking into where the money’s gone, tracing them, going after the directors,” she says. “When people come to us, it’s their, their last port of call.”
An old mentor calls her Joan, after Joan of Arc, and tells her to get off her white horse. She doesn’t argue. “I get so frustrated when people are wronged,” Harrington says. Speaking of the firm's values, she says, “Fighting for the underdog is definitely one.”
Harrington was lead instructing solicitor in the Badenoch/Gunns litigation that ended in the High Court’s 2023 decision in Bryant v Badenoch Integrated Logging, which confirmed the abolition of the peak indebtedness rule – a method liquidators used to maximise the unfair preference payments they could claw back from suppliers who kept trading with a failing company.
In her nomination, she named resilience as her biggest strength. “I am able to pivot quickly and create new goals, or salvage what others would consider to be an unrecoverable situation,” she says.
That work now informs policy. On a pro bono basis, she meets MPs and members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services on implementing recommendations from the 2022 inquiry into the insolvency industry, to which she made submissions. Her ambition for Pivotal is to become the go-to firm in insolvency for people who have lost everything. “If we need to be a team of 30 to get the presence in the industry to be that go-to, then so be it,” she says.
For Harrington, the gender barriers are subtler than they once were, but they surface – particularly in commercial and insolvency work, where liquidators and counsel are still predominantly men. Some emails from older opposing practitioners read as, “Sit down, love.” In her nomination, she described having to establish her authority before being taken seriously. “The assumption is one of lack of authority rather than an automatic positive assumption that may come with being a man,” she says.
So she has made mentoring a priority. At her previous firm she trained at least 12 junior lawyers and students, 11 of them women – all now qualified, and two now partners there. She still mentors former colleagues, one of whom was promoted from associate to senior associate within two months of joining a new firm. In her view, the real shortage isn’t role models but mentors. “The number of women who have the capacity or willingness to mentor the lawyers coming up through the ranks is insufficient to meet the demand,” she says.
Closer to home, she sponsored local sports teams and charities to the value of $6,000 this financial year, with a commitment to lift that to $15,000, and runs free Q&A seminars for small businesses through local traders’ associations.
Q: Why leave a traditional firm to start your own?
A: “It was very much the type of firm that had been around for about 35 years and it’s still operated in the same way but with the new generation of lawyers coming through, they like to work very differently and they don’t really care about the pay packet and don’t want the hours and six-minute increments. That was what drove me to do it.”
Q: How do you decide who not to act for?
A: “If I catch wind that someone is not being upfront with me or perhaps, they’re the one that’s revoking the handshake deal or something like that, then I’ll just tell them straight up, ‘I’m not going to act’ or ‘You’re in the wrong here and you need to fix it’.”
Q: What culture are you trying to build?
A: “If people are happy at work, the billing will come. The clients will stay and the money will come in. It’s more just there’s such a high turnover in the legal industry, especially with the young ones. So, having that environment where they want to stay, that’s going to be my big-ticket item.”
Q: How do you support younger women in the profession?
A: “Some of the young women, I’ve definitely seen them be very nervous to pick up the phone and call an opposing practitioner if they know that it’s an older male, they’ll sometimes feel like they’re getting put in their place and it just deflates them. And if I see that, I’ll give them that pep talk and bring them back up.”
Over the next two years, women in legal leadership will be shaped by the NZLS’s new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy, due mid-October 2026, pressure for fairer work allocation and law school programs linking students with senior judges and barristers. RMIT’s Diana Bowman expects the top of the profession to look dramatically different within 15 to 20 years.
In New Zealand, the next shift is imminent. Rusbatch said the NZLS is preparing to launch a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy for the profession in mid-October 2026, building on the Gender Equality Charter introduced in 2018 and backed by an industry action plan. She was clear about where the pressure needs to land. “Equitable allocation of work remains one of the most powerful levers for change because experience on complex and strategically important matters often leads directly to advancement,” she says.
In Australia, Bowman – who has spoken about her own approach in Australasian Lawyer’s interview with RMIT law dean Diana Bowman – expects the sheer weight of numbers to reshape the top of the profession – eventually. “I anticipate that in 15, 20 years’ time, what we see in terms of the partners, what we see in terms of the chief justices and what we see on the bench will look dramatically different from when I was in law school and today,” she says.
Law schools are trying to shorten that wait. RMIT has launched a Judge-in-Residence program, with former High Court Justice Michael Kirby as its inaugural judge, and will launch a Barrister-in-Residence program in 2027 with former Supreme Court of Victoria judge Lex Lasry. Bowman also sees the old boys’ network giving way to women deliberately bringing colleagues with them. “A rising tide lifts all ships,” she says.
The top female lawyers in Australia and New Zealand named in Elite Women 2026 share a habit: they treat the structure of their workplace as something they can change, not something to survive. They sponsor rather than simply mentor, open decision-making below partner level and reward staff in ways traditional firms never tried.
In doing so, they are redefining what women in legal leadership looks like. Above all, they don’t stop at their own arrival. As Bowman puts it, the people driving real change are not those chasing credit. “It’s those who turn up because they are committed to it,” she says. On that measure, the class of 2026 is already doing the work – and making it easier for the next generation to reach the top and be heard once they get there.
These answers summarise the key facts from Elite Women 2026: who was recognised, how winners were chosen and what Law Society of NSW, NZLS and judicial data from 2025 and 2026 show about women’s share of legal leadership in Australia and New Zealand.
Q: What is Elite Women 2026?
A: Elite Women 2026 is the sixth annual list from Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer recognising 105 outstanding female leaders in the legal profession across Australia and New Zealand. Honourees work in roles connected to the legal profession and have demonstrated a passion for the law through their influence on it.
Q: What share of law firm partners in Australia and New Zealand are women?
A: Women hold 37% of partner and principal roles in NSW private practice despite making up 56% of solicitors, according to the Law Society of NSW’s 2025 Annual Profile. In New Zealand, women held 43% of partner and director roles as at June 2026 while making up 57.5% of lawyers, according to the New Zealand Law Society. On the bench, women made up 47.3% of Australian judges and magistrates at 30 June 2025 but 42.7% of superior court judges and 33.9% of Federal Court judges, according to the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration.
Q: What is an equity partner in a law firm?
A: An equity partner owns a share of the law firm and receives a share of its profits, while a salaried partner holds the partner title but is paid a fixed salary. In New Zealand, the NZLS’s 2025 Gender Equality Charter survey found the share of women equity partners in signatory law firms remained below 40%, even though women held 41% of all senior legal roles.
Q: Why are women still under-represented in legal leadership?
A: Professor Diana Bowman of RMIT University points to carer obligations and structural barriers that persist despite more women graduating in law than men. The NZLS’s Katie Rusbatch also cites limited flexible working and inequitable allocation of work, while 2026 Elite Woman Samantha Gou notes many female partners continue doing their previous job on top of their leadership role.
Q: What will change for women in legal leadership in New Zealand in 2026?
A: The New Zealand Law Society is preparing to launch a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy for the profession in mid-October 2026, building on its 2018 Gender Equality Charter. It will be supported by an industry action plan setting out practical steps and measurable outcomes.
Q: What do the 2026 Elite Women have in common?
A: The winners profiled in this report share a focus on changing workplace structures rather than working around them – sponsoring junior women, opening firm governance to staff below partner level and building firms around flexible work and shared rewards. They also focus on supporting women after promotion, not just getting them there.
In June 2026, Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer invited legal professionals from across Australia and New Zealand to nominate outstanding female leaders for the sixth annual Elite Women list. Nominees were required to be working in a role connected to the legal profession, demonstrate a passion for the law through their influence on the profession and not have been previously recognised on the Elite Women list.
Nominators were asked to provide detailed information about their nominee’s accomplishments and initiatives over the past 12 months, including specific examples of professional achievements and contributions to the legal industry.
To determine the final list of 105 Elite Women, the editorial teams at Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer carefully reviewed all nominations, assessing each nominee’s meaningful impact on the legal profession.
The Elite Women report is proudly supported by Queensland Young Lawyers and Otago Women’s Law Society.
