He also shares one way he's helping president-elect David Campbell ease into the new role
Earlier this week, Frazer Barton told NZ Lawyer how it felt to be stepping down as president of the New Zealand Law Society | Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa by next year. In the second part of this interview, he looks back on the most memorable parts of his three-and-a-half-year term on top and how he has adapted his vision for the organisation.
In the three and a half years that you've been in this role, what can you say has been the most memorable part of being president?
I don't think there's one thing – there are a number of things that I'd highlight if I look at what we've achieved.
One is the membership model that has been a very important piece of work because we were facing some serious financial difficulties. Last year, chief executive Katie [Rusbatch, chief executive] and I did a tour around the country holding 28 meetings. We think we spoke to about 1,500 lawyers, because the only way now to actually engage with people is face to face – people get overwhelmed with their emails. It was an exhausting process, but we had a 99% really favourable response so it was well worthwhile. The results in terms of the membership uptake and the revenue we've generated are very heartening.
The other one is the changes we've brought into the constitution. Previously, the board’s lifespan was very short and it wasn't best practice in terms of governance. I think on a worldwide scale now in terms of the legal profession, we have implemented best practice in terms of a board that genuinely represents a whole lot of different interests. It’s there for long enough to be concerned about the long term rather than the short term, and it has the ability to appoint the president and hold the president accountable, which is also a great achievement.
The engagement with lawyers throughout the country has been memorable – the down-to-earth grassroots stuff. People working really hard, absolutely dedicated and with a great passion for serving their clients and achieving justice under really difficult circumstances at times, and right round the country. When you're dealing with all sorts of difficult issues, it's encouraging to see our colleagues, the collegiality and that dedication.
I've had the experience of being at international conferences and hearing these amazing, inspiring speakers – Baroness Helena Kennedy is an amazing person to listen to. I see the energy, the commitment to justice and the collegiality internationally. I come back with all these notes and quotes from various people that I then pepper my speeches with. It just reinforces the commitment to democracy, the rule of law, access to justice and how all these things are linked.
I've been on the steering group for the Te Ao Mārama programme, which is run by chief District Court judge Heemi Taumaunu. I've been at those regular meetings, and judges are sitting there looking at all the problems in front of them, and they're trying to think of solutions. How do we actually address these problems, or are we just going to carry on throwing people in jail? It's early days, and Te Ao Mārama is only in eight centres in the far north but we're getting good reports.
In 2022, you were a vice president who was looking to become president of the Law Society. How did your vision for the organisation evolve when you finally became president?
I learned a lot during that first year or so, which was quite an eye opener. This [Law Society] is a big, complicated organisation, and when you're vice president and so just a board member, you only start scratching the surface. You know that there's a lot involved and a lot to learn. At that [vice president] stage, it wasn't obvious that we were going to have to go down the membership subscription path, nor that we needed changes to the constitution.
What I'm hoping with David is, it won’t be such a big job to come up to speed on because he's been more intimately involved with the new structure. In addition to our formal board meetings, we have an informal board meeting, just by Zoom, once every fortnight. We just talk about mainly the chief executive and what's keeping her awake at night so that we can be aware of things and discuss it.
And then in meetings I'm sharing positive things and negative things so that everyone has an awareness of what the president's doing and what's involved because the president is representing the whole organisation, the whole profession. It's not this completely separate figure who goes and does his or her own thing. I think that sort of accountability is really important.
