to benefit New Zealand
Recent Law Foundation Grants
10th April 2009
1. New Zealand's first uniform guide to legal citation is currently being developed and has received a New Zealand Law Foundation grant of $15,000.
The project developed out a meeting Justice Robert Chambers, of the Court of Appeal, with academics and legal publishers in December 2008.
That meeting decided New Zealand needed a uniform style guide, and that simply adopting the Australian guide was not the most appropriate action.
"Such a guide will promote consistency in legal writing over a range of legal endeavour - from submissions, to judgments through to advanced legal research," says Victoria University reader Geoff McLay who is leading the project along with Justice Chambers.
The guide would be an important source of encouragement for accuracy in legal citation. It would also avoid considerable inefficiency as authors and publishers currently had to convert from one particular style to another.
The aim of the project was to provide the guide by the beginning of 2010. It would be used by the courts, practitioners, law reports, legal publishers, students and researchers.
2. NZ Law Society CLE Ltd has received a grant of $21,700 to revise its Residential Property Entry Level Workshop.
The revision of the workshop, one of a series of entry-level training programmes conducted by NZLS CLE, resulted from an unexpected but significant development in property law - the new Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) Agreement for Sale and Purchase (ASAP).
The current workshop is based around the joint ASAP developed by REINZ and the Auckland District Law Society (now ADLS Inc).
The Law Foundation grant will cover the cost of revising the course background material so that references to the joint ASAP are cross-referenced to the clauses in the new REINZ agreement. It will also cover a complete rewrite of a module to give participants education on and practice using the new REINZ agreement.
3. A history of the first hundred years of law at Canterbury University has received a Law Foundation grant of $5,000 towards the cost of publishing.
Written by Professor Jeremy Finn, who has taught law at Canterbury University since 1978, the book is provisionally entitled Educating for the Profession: the first hundred years of law at Canterbury.
The Canterbury law school has already contributed more than $10,000 towards the work, funding research and travel for the author. The manuscript, covering the years 1873-1973, has already been written and is currently being prepared for publication.
4. Would an Environmental Protection Authority for New Zealand improve environmental governance? This question is explored in a policy paper that has received a Law Foundation grant of $8,000.
This paper will be launched at the Environmental Defence Society's (EDS) Reform in Paradise conference in Auckland on 8-9 June.
The paper is designed to focus EDS's professional legal and policy skills into a piece of work that will inform the thinking and debate about how the environmental institutions in New Zealand might be restructured around a new Environmental Protection Authority and what this would mean for environmental law going forward. The 30- to 50-page paper will include learnings from other countries.