New Zealand Law Librarians Symposium May 7 & 8 2009

Theresa Rogers attended two sessions at the New Zealand Law Librarians symposium held at Auckland City Libraries.

Employment law
Greg Cain, Partner at Minter Ellison spoke on the changes in employment law since the introduction of the new government. The changes so far are:

• 90 day trial periods
• Kiwi saver
• Restart – redundancy package
• 9 day fortnight

Changes to come are:

• Holidays – the ability of employees to trade in their 4th week of annual leave
• Collective bargaining – Unions will need to get permission from employers to get access to employees at the workplace
• Dispute resolution – mediation will continue to be the primary problem solving mechanism however there will be changes to the Meditation Services so they will be properly resourced with qualified mediators.
• Also, there will be changes to the Employment Relations Authority to ensure that the Authority acts in a more judicial manner (the aim is that this will allow relatively simple access to justice while ensuring robust & judicial results).

The most interesting aspect the information about the 90 day trial periods is aimed at:

• benefitting small to medium employers
• became effective 1 Mar 2009 (by written agreement between the employee & employer)
• During the trial period an employee may be dismissed and the employee is not entitled to bring a PG (Personal Grievance) or any other legal proceedings in respect of the dismissal
• It is not available to employers with more than 20 employees or it the employer has previously employed the employee

However there are issues already surfacing like when does employment ‘begin’ (when they sign the contract or when they physically start work); Do casuals count?; What about fixed term contracts?; What about giving notice?; Also there is no impediment to bringing a PG or legal proceedings other than in respect of the dismissal (eg they could claim racial discrimination).


AUT law school
Professor Noel Cox, Auckland University of Technology spoke on the process of allowing AUT to offer a law degree. Evidently, universities cannot just decide themselves that they are now going to offer law degrees, there is a set process that they must go through. This process is in three stages:

1. The Council of Legal Education must give its approval
2. The New Zealand Universities Vice Chancellors Committee must also give their approval
3. The Tertiary Education Commission must also give their approval

Part of the process is looking at the resources that the institution offers to support this degree (eg staffing expertise and physical resources – with particular attention to library resources).

AUT gained these approvals and in March of this year commenced their first intake of 80-90 law students; the law degree will be fully established in 4 years time. A significant number of these students are mature students (in fact one is 78 years old!!!!). AUT decided that they did not want to be exclusive with this degree so it is available to anyone who wishes to apply, however they must maintain a ‘B’ average or above in the law papers to continue studying.

AUT will be focusing this degree on ‘Commercial Law” – which will have a much more generalist application. Evidently most law graduates leave the profession within 5 years & less that have ever practise law at all. Intellectual Property; Company Law and Legal Ethics will be compulsory papers for all graduates.

AUT are currently recruiting law staff, they have appointed Ian Eagles as Dean of Law & the degree will be located within the faculty of Business – it has become now ‘Business & Law”