Simpson Grierson is a New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 commercial law

Commercial law

Commercial law is the body of law that governs business and commercial transactions...

 firm

Law firm

A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...

 founded in 1887; it is ranked in the top four firms in that country. The firm is a partnership

Partnership

A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.Since humans are social beings, partnerships between individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments, and varied combinations thereof, have always been and remain commonplace...

 comprising 48 partners and consultants supported by around 160 lawyers and legal executive

Legal Executive

Legal executives are trained legal professionals in England & Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong who often specialise in a particular area of law. There is, however, no direct equivalent to a legal executive in Scotland...

s in four departments (Banking & Finance, Commercial, Litigation and Resources & Infrastructure). The legal staff are supported by around 140 personnel (legal administrator

Legal administrator

A legal administrator is a non-attorney law office employee or law office manager responsible for a law firm's overall day-to-day operations. Legal administrators are responsible for ensuring the delivery of legal services by supervising staff and identifying and developing business opportunities...

s, information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

, librarians, accounts, human resources

Human resources

Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...

 and marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

). It has offices in New Zealand's three largest metropolitan areas Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

 and Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

.

Practice areas

The firm practises all aspects of commercial law

Commercial law

Commercial law is the body of law that governs business and commercial transactions...

, including banking and finance

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

, corporate law

Corporate law

Corporate law is the study of how shareholders, directors, employees, creditors, and other stakeholders such as consumers, the community and the environment interact with one another. Corporate law is a part of a broader companies law...

, corporate insolvency

Insolvency

Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used to refer to a business, insolvency refers to the inability of a company to pay off its debts.Business insolvency is defined in two different ways:...

 and restructuring

Restructuring

Restructuring is the corporate management term for the act of reorganizing the legal, ownership, operational, or other structures of a company for the purpose of making it more profitable, or better organized for its present needs...

, marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

, advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

, mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...

, property law

Property law

Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property and in personal property, within the common law legal system. In the civil law system, there is a division between movable and immovable property...

, taxation law, energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

 & utilities law (including upstream oil and gas and electricity), and employment law. It is one of the New Zealand's leading law firms in the interpretation of the Resource Management Act

Resource Management Act

The Resource Management Act passed in 1991 in New Zealand is a significant, and at times, controversial Act of Parliament. The RMA promotes the sustainable management of natural and physical resources such as land, air and water...

 and is one of New Zealand's leading public law

Public law

Public law is a theory of law governing the relationship between individuals and the state. Under this theory, constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law are sub-divisions of public law...

 firms, especially in relation to local government

Local government

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...

, where it advises nearly two thirds of New Zealand's local authorities, and news media

News media

The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...

. A significant litigation and dispute resolution

Dispute resolution

Dispute resolution is the process of resolving disputes between parties.-Methods:Methods of dispute resolution include:* lawsuits * arbitration* collaborative law* mediation* conciliation* many types of negotiation* facilitation...

 practice also exists.

History

The firm's history can be traced back to 1887 when Butler White & Hanna was established in Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, specialising initially in maritime law and insurance law

Insurance law

Insurance law is the name given to practices of law surrounding insurance, including insurance policies and claims. It can be broadly broken into three categories - regulation of the business of insurance; regulation of the content of insurance policies, especially with regard to consumer...

, but adding local government

Local government

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...

 law in the 1930s. In 1921 Grierson Jackson was founded followed two years later in 1923, by the founding of Simpson Coates & Clapshaw. In 1982 Grierson Jackson merged with Bruce Bornholdt's practice to form Grierson Bornholdt, acquiring a Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

 presence. The following year, 1983, saw Grierson Bornholdt and Simpson Coates & Clapshaw merge to create Simpson Grierson. Specialist fields include company law, commercial law

Commercial law

Commercial law is the body of law that governs business and commercial transactions...

, arbitration

Arbitration

Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...

 and construction and energy law. In 1985, Simpson Grierson and Butler White & Hanna merge to create Simpson Grierson Butler White. In 1991 the firm was joined by a number of partners from the former Brandon Brookfield, Wellington and in 1995, the firm adopted Simpson Grierson as its permanent name. Its Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

 office was opened in 2007.

Affiliations

The firm is the sole New Zealand member of Lex Mundi

Lex Mundi

Lex Mundi is a professional services network. It is the largest law firm networks. The network was established in 1989. As of 2011 it had 160 member firms which have 21,100 attorneys...

, an alliance of 161 major law firms (including Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

's Clayton Utz

Clayton Utz

Clayton Utz is a leading commercial law firm in Australia. It is considered one of the Big Six commercial law firms.-Legal services:The firm provides legal services in banking and finance, capital markets and securities, competition, compliance, construction and projects, corporate / M&A,...

); a co-founder of the Pacific Rim Advisory Council

Pacific Rim Advisory Council

The Pacific Rim Advisory Council is an international law firm association with a unique strategic alliance within the global legal community providing for the exchange of professional information among its 30 top tier independent member law firms....

; a member of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association

Inter-Pacific Bar Association

The Inter-Pacific Bar Association or IPBA is an international association of business and commercial lawyers, founded in 1991. Its members consist of residents of the Asia-Pacific region, or lawyers with a strong interest in that region...

; and the New Zealand affiliate of major United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 law firm Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie is an international law firm, founded in Chicago in 1949 by Russell Baker and John McKenzie. It is home to more than 3,800 lawyers spread over 70 offices in 42 different countries....

.