2009 New Zealand Law Awards^TM Methodology          

Unique to the New Zealand Law Awards^TM, the winners of the Premium and Specialist Awards are identified directly by their clients (with the exception of the Legal Personnel Employer of Choice Award, the ComplyWith In-house Counsel Team of the Year Award, and The College of Law Community Service in Law Award).

The Law Awards utilises online survey technology to ensure fair and representative voting by the consumers of legal services. The Law Awards process has three distinct periods:

• the Nominations period, 
• the Voting period, and 
• the Awards ceremony.

Nominations Period – 7 August to 8 September

From 7 August to 8 September, nominations will be open for each of the Law Awards.

• Clients can nominate.
• Candidates can self-nominate.
• The nominations will be audited to remove nominations which do not meet the face value criteria (For example, a firm nominated for the Partridge Jewellers Large Law Firm of the Year Award that has fewer than the requisite 25+ partners).
• Nominators can only make one nomination per Law Award. Once the nomination has been made, you will not be able to nominate anyone else for that particular Law Award.
• Nominators will be able to vote during the Voting period provided they meet the voter eligibility criteria. The voter eligibility criteria is set out on the Law Award description pages.
• With two exceptions, nominations will be limited to a maximum of 10 finalist nominees for each Law Award. Where the number of candidates nominated for a particular Law Award exceeds 10, the finalists will be based on the number of nominations received for each candidate. In these circumstances, a firm’s self-nomination will not be counted. Exceptions: 
  • The Legal Personnel Employer of Choice Award has unlimited nominees. 
  • The LexisNexis Regional/Suburban Law Firm of the Year Award shortlists the top 25 nominees.

Voting Period – 18 September to 6 October

From 18 September to 6 October, registered voters will be sent an email containing a link to the online voting form, which they will need to complete and submit on or before 6 October.

• The voting form contains specific questions targeted to elicit qualitative information about their opinions and perspectives on the candidate’s performance relative to the criteria for each Law Award. Each question carries a rating to provide weighted quantitative data to help identify the winner. The voting form requires voters to record that they have instructed a law firm or barrister in the past year. For the In-house Legal Team of the Year Award, the voting form requires voters to record that they have worked with a range of in-house legal teams in the past year.
• The respective voter eligibility requirements for each Law Award are set out on the Law Award description pages.
• Voting is confidential. Voter contact details are provided by the voters themselves when they register to nominate and/or to vote, not by the nominees.
• Voters’ contact details may be used to check that voters are eligible to vote. Ineligible votes will not be counted.
• To prevent vote-stacking, each registered voter will have only one vote for each Law Award for which they are eligible to vote.