Senior Associate

Senior Associate

Best Practice Lawyers | Foxton & Waikanae, Kapiti Coast - You can be at either office, or a mix of the two

Practice areas: Property, Commercial, Relationship Property, Trusts, Family Law

Pathway: Senior Associate to Salaried Partner to Equity Partnership Salary: Competitive, discussed openly with serious candidates

1. The Work

This is a genuine senior caseload. You have direct responsibility for your files from instruction through to completion, across a broad range of matters for clients who have often been with the firm for years. Nobody checks your work unless you ask them to.

The workload is varied enough to keep you sharp and manageable enough to do properly. There is no volume pressure and no billing target that requires you to sacrifice evenings to hit. Just good work, done well, for clients who trust you.

Your caseload will cover

• Residential and rural property transactions, subdivisions, cross-lease conversions and refinancing
• Commercial and business matters including sales and purchases, leases and advisory work for local operators
• Relationship property and separation matters, handled with the directness and care clients need
• Trusts, wills, enduring powers of attorney and estate administration
• Family law matters including care arrangements and Family Court proceedings
• Exposure to dispute resolution and litigation matters as they arise

How the caseload works

You will inherit an active set of files from day one, which means immediate client contact and no slow start waiting for work to come in. Alongside the inherited caseload you build your own client base and relationships over time. If you bring existing clients or referral relationships with you, there is room for them here.

You are the lawyer your clients deal with directly. You make the calls on how matters are run. You are not a step in someone else's process.

2. About Best Practice Lawyers

Best Practice Lawyers is a general practice firm with offices in Foxton and Waikanae, serving clients across the Kapiti Coast, Horowhenua and wider New Zealand. Founded by Trish Amor-Davy in 2014, the firm has built a strong reputation for practical, people-first legal advice across property, commercial, relationship property, family law, trusts and estate administration.

The firm is proudly woman-owned, community-rooted and committed to doing things properly. It is a team of eleven who know each other well, where the quality of work and the quality of life outside work are both taken seriously.

3. Autonomy & How the Firm Operates

Best Practice Lawyers is an eleven-person general practice firm founded and led by Trish Amor-Davy, who brings over 20 years of experience across relationship property, dispute resolution and general practice. The firm operates across two offices in Foxton and Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast.

It is small enough that everyone knows what is going on and large enough to handle genuinely complex and varied matters. The culture is collaborative without being precious. If you have a view on how something should be done, it gets heard.

What autonomy looks like in practice

• You manage your own files and client relationships without supervision
• You are not part of a billing machine managed by someone else
• Decisions about how to run a matter are yours to make
• You are visible to the principals and your input carries weight in how the firm operates
• There are no unnecessary layers between you and the work

The team

The firm includes senior lawyers, legal executives with decades of experience and support staff who take quality seriously. The firm has a strong reputation in its community, built carefully over time. The person stepping into this role helps carry that forward.

Trish leads the firm with a practical, solutions-focused approach and a genuine belief that lawyers do better work when they are trusted to get on with it.

4. The Pathway to Partnership

Most firms either do not offer a partnership pathway or offer one that moves so slowly it is barely worth mentioning. This one is real, structured and being offered deliberately because the firm is actively planning its future leadership.

Senior Associate

Your entry point into the firm. From day one you have full ownership of your files and your client relationships. You decide how matters are run, you manage the client directly, and you make the calls. The expectation is that you get on with it, and the trust is there from the outset. Nobody is looking over your shoulder.

Salaried Partner

As your client base grows and your contribution to the firm deepens, the next step is salaried partnership. This is not just a title change. It is a formal shift in how you are recognised within the firm, reflecting your role in its leadership, your standing with clients, and the genuine part you play in shaping how the practice operates. You are no longer simply working within the firm. You are helping to lead it.

Equity Partner or Ownership

For the right person, the conversation goes further still. Equity partnership and potential ownership of the firm is a real possibility, not an aspiration held at arm's length or a conversation deferred indefinitely. The financial structure of any buy-in would be worked through together, in a way that makes genuine sense for both parties. This step is for someone who is not simply looking for a better role, but who wants to build something of their own and be part of the firm's future at the highest level.

The entry point is Senior Associate. What happens after that depends on your contribution, your clients and the relationship you build with the firm. But the conversation is on the table from the start, and it is meant sincerely.

For the right person, the principals are also open to a longer-term conversation around partnership and potential ownership within the firm. It is not something they advertise widely, but it is a real possibility for someone who fits.

5. Hours & Life on the Kapiti Coast

The hours

The hours are typically 8:30am to 5:30pm. There is no culture of staying late to look busy, no weekend emails expected, no billable hour target that requires you to sacrifice evenings.

The work is serious and the standard is high. But the firm is built on the belief that lawyers do better work when they have a life outside of it.

The location

Foxton and Waikanae sit on the Kapiti Coast, about 90 minutes north of Wellington. The firm acts for clients across New Zealand on a broad range of matters, so the work is not limited or parochial. But the life is genuinely different from a main-centre practice.

• Foxton Beach on your doorstep
• Meaningfully more affordable housing than Wellington or Auckland
• Strong local schools and a community that knows who you are
• Short commutes and genuine time outside of work
• Wellington close enough for a day trip when you need it

If you are considering a move and want to understand what it looks like practically, that is a conversation we are happy to have.

6. Culture & The Team

Best Practice Lawyers Team

Based in Waikanae and Foxton and serving the Kapiti Coast and Horowhenua, the team at Best Practice Lawyers brings decades of combined experience to everything from property and conveyancing to family law and estate planning. What makes this firm stand out is not just the quality of the legal work, it is the people behind it, and the reason so many locals have trusted them with what matters most.

Thirteen years and counting

Best Practice Lawyers recently celebrated thirteen years in business. In that time the team has worked from three different offices, supported local businesses, charities, schools and community events, and travelled to Fiji together. They have competed in mini golf, archery, axe throwing, cooking competitions, cocktail making contests and an amazing race. The office mascot, Angus McDuck, travelled all the way from Scotland to join them.

A wedding celebrated, retirements marked, and plenty of other precious life milestones shared along the way. Through all of it, the firm has always supported each other through the highs and lows of everyday life.

7. About You

You are probably not actively looking. You are good at what you do and your clients like you. But something is not quite right, whether that is the hours, the politics, the lack of a real ownership pathway, or the sense that your career should be building toward something more than it currently is.

What we are looking for

• Solid PQE with demonstrable senior-level practice in one or more of the areas above
• You run files confidently end-to-end without your work being checked as a matter of course
• Your clients trust you and feel genuinely looked after, not processed
• You are thinking about your next five to ten years, not just your next pay review
• You want to be part of something, not just employed somewhere
• An existing client base or referral network is a genuine advantage, though not a requirement

8. How to Apply

Via Linkedin - All enquiries and applications are handled with complete confidentiality. If you want to understand more about the work, the firm or the partnership pathway before committing to anything, just get in touch. Alternatively, you can send an email directly to ***email_hidden***

There is no obligation in reaching out. A brief conversation costs nothing.