Lawyers told to trust other lawyers

Independent Auckland lawyers are being enticed back into the national fold with a promise their jealously-held multi-million dollar building will be safe in a trust.

A fight over ownership of the Auckland District Law Society’s freehold CBD property – said to be worth between $8 million and $14 million depending on who’s talking – drove a wedge between law society bosses and suspicious Auckland lawyers who feared the asset-poor Wellington-based New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) would sell it off.

Required by law to belong to the NZLS, Auckland lawyers earlier formed Auckland District Law Society Inc (ADLSI) to secure independent ownership of the landmark property in Chancery Street and a range of profitable business units.

Auckland lawyers will be asked soon to approve an amalgamation of ADLSI and NZLS, which would include transferring the ownership of the Chancery Street property to a trust which re-elected ADLSI president Anna Fitzgibbon said would be “primarily for the benefit of Auckland members.”

The deal, in the form of a memorandum of understanding, was brokered just before Christmas between Ms Fitzgibbon and NZLS president Jonathan Temm.

It would secure the future of ADLSI business units such as commercial, continuing legal education, legal practice manual, LawNews magazine, and lawyers directory.

Those business units, which provide a healthy income to ADLSI, would continue to be operated from Auckland, but by NZLS.

The Auckland branch of NZLS would effectively merge with ADLSI, which would be required to go into liquidation with its assets and undertakings (apart from the Chancery property) passing directly to the NZLS.

Jobs would be secured for at least a year.

Ms Fitzgibbon, who was returned before Christmas for a third term as ADLSI president with more than 600 votes – well ahead of challengers Frank Godinet (more than 300 votes) and Jennie Vickers (more than 100 votes) – said much progress had been made in 2010 in healing the rift between the two organisations.

The majority of the council of ADLSI has already voted to ask members if they favour the amalgamation proposal.

Auckland lawyers are due to meet on January 24 to debate the proposal before voting on it.

Mr Temm last month told National Business Review Auckland’s 3500 independent lawyers would not survive because they were not “financially viable” and didn’t pay rent on their freehold Chancery property.

In a tirade against claims ADLSI was under pressure from NZLS to surrender an estimated $20 million “golden goose” of assets, Mr Temm said NZLS did not want the property because there were too many conditions attached.

Typically cynical insiders, who declined to be named, questioned why details of the plan were sent to lawyers over Christmas, when law firms were closed and most lawyers would be on holiday until late January.