Legal Demand in New Zealand: 2026 Statistics
By Xabi Errotabehere, founder of Find A Lawyer
+On this page
Key figures
Demand by practice area
Average monthly searches for each practice area, October 2025 to September 2026. The lawyer statistics show Property and Family as the areas most lawyers list; here is whether demand follows the same split. A further 11,100 searches a month (12%) ask for a lawyer without naming an area.
| Practice area | Searches a month | Share | Lawyers listing it | Searches per lawyer | Share of our enquiries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tenancy and disputes | 18,650 | 20.2% | 789 | 23.6 | 11.2% |
| Family | 14,160 | 15.3% | 1,512 | 9.4 | 16.5% |
| Employment | 13,140 | 14.2% | 582 | 22.6 | 7.2% |
| Legal aid and free help | 9,490 | 10.3% | — | — | — |
| Wills and estates | 7,360 | 8% | 822 | 9 | 16% |
| Property and conveyancing | 7,240 | 7.8% | 1,910 | 3.8 | 14.9% |
| Immigration | 5,410 | 5.9% | 248 | 21.8 | 8.1% |
| Personal injury and ACC | 3,750 | 4.1% | 77 | 48.7 | 4% |
| Criminal | 2,080 | 2.3% | 518 | 4 | 11% |
Searches: Google Ads Keyword Planner. Lawyers: those who list the area on the NZ Law Society register (6,458 listings; listing an area is optional, so per-lawyer figures compare areas with each other, not with the national rate). Enquiries: 544 enquiries to Find A Lawyer from New Zealand, 6 November 2025 to 6 November 2026; areas under 10 enquiries not shown.
Demand by region
Legal searches made from each region, against Stats NZ population. The Google Trends index is a second, independent measure: the share of a region's searches that are about lawyers, where 100 is the region with the highest share.
| Region | Searches a month | Population | Per 100,000 | Trends index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wellington | 11,560 | 543,400 | 2,127 | 100 |
| Canterbury | 13,960 | 698,200 | 1,999 | 84 |
| Auckland | 36,070 | 1,816,000 | 1,986 | 99 |
| Otago | 4,370 | 253,900 | 1,721 | 78 |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 3,960 | 260,700 | 1,519 | 73 |
| Waikato | 8,060 | 532,100 | 1,515 | 86 |
| Northland | 2,930 | 201,100 | 1,457 | 85 |
| Bay of Plenty | 5,120 | 351,500 | 1,457 | 81 |
| Hawke's Bay | 2,610 | 179,700 | 1,452 | 77 |
| Gisborne | — | 52,700 | — | 84 |
| Taranaki | — | 130,300 | — | 71 |
| Nelson–Tasman | — | 114,200 | — | 69 |
| Marlborough | — | 50,800 | — | 59 |
| West Coast | — | 34,700 | — | 64 |
| Southland | — | 104,800 | — | 77 |
Searches: Google Ads Keyword Planner. Index: Google Trends, topic "Lawyer", mean of three overlapping five-year windows. Gisborne, Taranaki, Nelson–Tasman, Marlborough, West Coast and Southland: too few searches for Google to report reliable counts (see method). ± marks a region whose index moved by more than 10 points between windows.
Searches per lawyer
Monthly legal searches from each region divided by the practising lawyers based there. A high number means more people looking for legal help for each local lawyer. Wellington and Auckland are low partly because government, in-house and large-firm lawyers work there and serve clients nationwide.
| Region | Searches per lawyer | Lawyers | Lawyers per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 16.5 | 240 | 92.1 |
| Northland | 11.3 | 259 | 128.8 |
| Hawke's Bay | 9.5 | 274 | 152.5 |
| Waikato | 8.6 | 932 | 175.2 |
| Otago | 7.6 | 577 | 227.3 |
| Bay of Plenty | 7.2 | 710 | 202 |
| Canterbury | 7.2 | 1,940 | 277.9 |
| Auckland | 5 | 7,228 | 398 |
| Wellington | 3.5 | 3,281 | 603.8 |
| Gisborne | — | 77 | 146.1 |
| Taranaki | — | 158 | 121.3 |
| Nelson–Tasman | — | 234 | 204.9 |
| Marlborough | — | 58 | 114.2 |
| West Coast | — | 25 | 72 |
| Southland | — | 132 | 126 |
Searches: Google Ads Keyword Planner. Lawyers: NZ Law Society register as at 2 November 2026, from our lawyer statistics.
Practice areas by region
Google Trends index for each practice area by region. Each column is separate: 100 is the region where that area takes the largest share of searches, so read down a column, not across a row. Small regions are included here because Trends pools every phrasing of a topic over five years.
| Region | Family | Employment | Property | Wills | Criminal | Immigration | ACC | Tenancy | Legal aid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northland | 78 | 66 | 97 | 100 | 73 | 48 | 81 | 82 | 100 |
| Auckland | 67 | 97 | 78 | 69 | 77 | 100 | 67 | 84 | 73 |
| Waikato | 87 | 78 | 77 | 74 | 69 | 72 | 81 | 71 | 79 |
| Bay of Plenty | 81 | 74 | 78 | 87 | 67 | 65 | 69 | 71 | 84 |
| Gisborne | 72± | 58± | — | 83 | 84± | — | 45± | — | 79± |
| Hawke's Bay | 100 | 88 | 75 | 78 | 74 | 74 | 60 | 60 | 78 |
| Taranaki | 88 | 72 | 62 | 83 | 53 | 26 | 63 | 51 | 75 |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 74 | 78 | 55 | 78 | 55 | 48 | 68 | 58 | 78 |
| Wellington | 90 | 92 | 97 | 82 | 100 | 94 | 100 | 100 | 93 |
| Nelson–Tasman | 58 | 79 | 77 | 86 | 50 | — | 75 | 70 | 65 |
| Marlborough | 42 | 79 | 94± | 87 | 48± | — | 66 | 44 | 49 |
| West Coast | 70 | 65± | — | 89 | — | — | 63± | — | 83± |
| Canterbury | 64 | 83 | 66 | 84 | 61 | 84 | 67 | 76 | 68 |
| Otago | 65 | 86 | 76 | 70 | 54 | 68 | 80 | 67 | 65 |
| Southland | 66 | 89 | 54 | 77 | 53 | 52± | 69 | 65± | 79 |
Google Trends topics: Family = "Family law", Employment = "Labour law", Property = "Conveyancing", Wills = "Will and testament", Criminal = "Criminal defense lawyer", Immigration = "Immigration law", ACC = "Accident Compensation Corporation", Tenancy = "Disputes Tribunal", Legal aid = "Legal aid". — = Google reports too little data. ± = moved by more than 10 points between windows.
Demand through the year
Legal demand is not flat through the year. Each line is a typical year: five years of Google Trends interest averaged by calendar month, so a single news story doesn't read as a season. Every area, and Keyword Planner's month-by-month counts for October 2025 to September 2026, are in the CSV.
Google Trends, New Zealand, five years to October 2026. Topics: Tenancy and disputes = "Disputes Tribunal", Family = "Family law", Employment = "Labour law".
Legal aid demand against coverage
Searches for legal aid and free legal help, against the legal aid lawyers in each region. Of the 143 family and criminal enquiries to Find A Lawyer where legal aid came up, 72% were likely eligible or said they could not pay a lawyer privately (69 of 86 family, 34 of 57 criminal).
| Region | Trends index | Searches per 100,000 | Legal aid lawyers per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northland | 100 | 144 | 40.8 |
| Wellington | 93 | 247 | 50.6 |
| Bay of Plenty | 84 | 131 | 52.1 |
| West Coast | 83 ±6 | — | 17.3 |
| Waikato | 79 | 145 | 37.6 |
| Gisborne | 79 ±6 | — | 41.7 |
| Southland | 79 | 191 | 25.8 |
| Hawke's Bay | 78 | 117 | 33.9 |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 78 | 157 | 25.7 |
| Taranaki | 75 | 184 | 30.7 |
| Auckland | 73 | 192 | 39.4 |
| Canterbury | 68 | 223 | 33.1 |
| Nelson–Tasman | 65 | — | 41.2 |
| Otago | 65 | 146 | 27.6 |
| Marlborough | 49 | — | 17.7 |
Index: Google Trends, topic "Legal aid". Searches: Google Ads Keyword Planner, legal aid and free-help queries. Legal aid lawyers: Ministry of Justice approvals matched to the NZ Law Society register.
How people ask
How people phrase a legal search, from the 8,908 legal queries that brought people to Find A Lawyer from Google (3 November 2025 to 3 November 2026) and 1,060 from Bing. These are samples of searches reaching one website, not all searches, so they show phrasing, not volume. 30.3% of them name only the problem, never asking for a lawyer.
| The search… | Bing | |
|---|---|---|
| Asks for a lawyer or legal advice | 69.7% | 26.3% |
| Names only the problem, not a lawyer | 30.3% | 73.7% |
| Phrased as a question | 0.8% | 3.5% |
| Asks about cost | 0.9% | 0.6% |
| Looks for free help or legal aid | 1.3% | 1.5% |
| Asks whether they need a lawyer | 0% | 0.1% |
| Says "near me" | 3.7% | 1.1% |
| Names a place | 50.1% | 29.3% |
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for findalawyer.co.nz. Searches for a named firm, practice or lawyer, and for Find A Lawyer itself, are excluded.
How we measure
- Search counts: Google Ads Keyword Planner average monthly searches, October 2025 to September 2026, for 150queries grouped by practice area. Google merges close variants (such as "family lawyer" and "family lawyers"), so nothing is counted twice. The full query list is published as a CSV: no place names, no firm or lawyer names.
- Regions:the same queries, located by Google to the searcher's region. Google reports any query under about 10 searches as 10, so small regions are mostly made of those floors. We leave a regional count blank when more than 40% of it comes from floored queries, rather than estimate it. 9 of 15 regions have reliable totals.
- Trends index: Google Trendsinterest by region for one topic per area, pulled alone. We average three five-year windows ending a month apart; they share 97% of their data, so their differences show Google's sampling noise. Nelson and Tasman are combined by population, as on our lawyer statistics page.
- Lawyers and population: our lawyer statistics (NZ Law Society register as at 2 November 2026) and Stats NZ, Subnational population estimates: At 30 June 2025 (provisional).
- Enquiries and search queries:Find A Lawyer's own data, used only where labelled. They are samples of people who reached one website, so we never use them as a measure of volume. Enquiries are counted nationally only, and any count under 10 is withheld.
- No firm, practice or lawyer is named or ranked anywhere on this page or in the data. We refresh these figures every month.
Cite and reuse
You're welcome to use these figures in articles, research and submissions, with a link to this page. Our own figures and the lawyer and population columns are licensed CC BY 4.0. Search counts and Trends indexes are Google's estimates and are not covered by our licence: credit Google Ads Keyword Planner or Google Trends as the source. Every row of the CSV names its source.
Find A Lawyer, Legal Demand in New Zealand: 2026 Statistics, search data October 2025 to September 2026, https://findalawyer.co.nz/research/legal-demand-in-new-zealand
- Download every table as CSV
- Download the query-to-practice-area mapping
- Questions about the method, or after a figure we don't publish? Email hi@findalawyer.co.nz.