Legal Executives New Zealand Incorporated | Rāngai Hāpai Ture o Aotearoa (LENZ) is the professional association for legal executives in New Zealand.
We provide support, education, and professional development opportunities for members, helping them to enhance their skills and knowledge as law professionals. We also serve as a platform for legal executives across New Zealand to network and collaborate.
We have four levels of active membership:
| Fellows |
Senior Registered Legal Executives |
| Associates |
Experienced Registered Legal Executives |
| Affiliates |
Registered Legal Executives in the early years of their career |
| Support |
Members who don’t meet the criteria for registration, e.g. students, unqualified legal executives, people employed in non-legal executive roles. |
Registered Legal Executives
Registered Legal Executives are respected, highly sought-after, non-lawyer professionals who work alongside lawyers; they play a valuable and important role in law firms and other organisations where legal services are required.
With the support of the New Zealand Law Society, registration was implemented in 2000 for suitably qualified and experienced legal executives. Registration differentiates those legal executives from non-members whose firms call their staff legal executives, but who may or may not be qualified or even doing the work of a legal executive.
Registered Legal Executives who have at least 12 months’ experience as a legal executive are, along with lawyers and appointed officers of trustee corporations, eligible to witness donor signatures to enduring powers of attorney under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988.
Registered Legal Executives may do some non-legal executive work (i.e. office management, trust account management, secretarial, PA) but the percentage of that work should not exceed 30% of their role. In addition, if they work part-time, they must be employed in a legal executive capacity for at least 15 hours per week.
If you have a New Zealand legal executive qualification and are employed as a legal executive under the supervision of a lawyer, you may be eligible for Affiliate membership and Registered Legal Executive status.
If you don’t yet meet the criteria for Affiliate membership you can apply for Support membership, however Support members are not Registered Legal Executives.
Apply now