THE RUR AL NZ L AW YER to clients, who may be too busy on the farm to deal with their legal issues.
Becoming a rural lawyer Before hiring an out-of-town lawyer, Mr Spargo and Ms Green say their firms look at connectivity to the local or rural sector. “Because we are in Invercargill, we’ve got a really strong focus on getting people with Southern connections, because otherwise they just don’t stay,” Ms Green says. Mr Spargo says BlackmanSpargo will look at hiring someone from an urban background, but that person would have to demonstrate a commitment to the rural sector. City lawyers, who desire a rural lifestyle, should not be put off because they don’t know anything yet. Partner at Barltrop Graham in Feilding, Lloyd Evans, who has been working in the area for over 40 years, says agricultural knowledge grows through the course of working with farmers over years.
Benefits of working rural “Most farmers are pretty straight up and honest people. They call a spade a spade and expect that from people they deal with and they see through people pretty easily,” Mr Spargo says. “But on the flipside, you tend to have a better relationship with those people than a big corporate, I guess, where the relationship can change overnight with changes to the CEO or the senior management team.” However, it can take years for an outsider to be accepted into a rural community where relationships are not built lightly. Mr Evans says working as a practitioner in an “old style” conveyancing firm has meant he doesn’t have to deal with the “emotional stress” other lawyers can face. “It’s a pleasant way to spend a week. Clients come in, it’s a happy half hour and they tell you what they need,” he says. “It’s probably idealistic to say farmers are nice people, but farmers, by and large, well they are pleasant people to work for and in most cases they are good clients.” LT
John Angland
Practising rural law By Elliot Sim What does it mean to be a rural lawyer? Christchurch practitioner and specialist in rural law Kit Mouat says lawyers in rural areas need to be general practitioners and have the ability to work with others to gain the vast amount of knowledge needed to deal with rural matters. Mr Mouat is a consultant at Goodman Tavendale Reid Law, an accredited supplier to Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), and has a detailed understanding of land matters. He specialises in advising the agricultural sector in high country tenure reviews, resource law – including foreshore and seabed – conservation land, Queen’s chain issues, land status, Māori issues, planning, conveyancing, valuation and arbitrations. “I deal mainly with high country people and the special nature of their leases that they have from the Crown and the way that the legislation impinges on pastoral leases.” He also determines what the Crown will pay in compensation for anything which may impact on someone’s land. “When it comes to rural law in a
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farming sense, it starts getting a hell of a lot more complicated with water rights, milking rights, and the ownership structures, structures that they have for the irrigation companies and they’re all different and varied. “Then you’ve got paper roads, Queen’s chain and issues like that, that can arise on the odd occasion,” Mr Mouat says. To be able to successfully carry out rural law work, Mr Mouat says lawyers need to have a good understanding of ownership structures, the rights of the companies such as Fonterra and its structures as well as a “huge understanding of resource management law”. Working with specialists in particular areas is also important. “If you’re going for water consents it’s absolutely huge. You’ve got to be able to get people around you and have some really good scientist-type people in the water area. “So really a lot of these cases are dealt with in three ways, between lawyers, accountants and the experts in the field of resource management.” In a single office, he says, a lawyer would have resource management people, legal executives for