Former Wall Street lawyer Stacey Shortall is LawFuel’s lawyer of the year for 2015.
A high flier who has flown back home Stacey Shortall has already received a “Women of Influence” award this year, where she received considerable recognition for her call-to-action: “Ask yourself, who did you help today?”
However Stacey Shortall receives the LawFuel award not because of her legal prowess but because of her impressive legal ability but because of her ability to transcend her legal career to create significant social programmes that have created major benefits for less advantaged members of the community, particularly children.
Her programme to assist imprisoned mothers with children, but she also started as weekly homework club at decile one schools to help chidren with homework and, most importantly, to provide them with role models to help with their development and aspirations.
Representing Certain Directors, Officers and Managers of Pike River Coal Limited Stacey Shortall gives her final submission to the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy
We also believe she is currently involved in developing further initiatives to help stem the epidemic of violence towards children in their homes.
Stacey Shortall’s impressive role in working within and developing such programmes began in New York where she had worked as a volunteer in New York state prisons, which lead to the development of a similar programme in New Zealand upon her return home.
Before returning from the United States to join Minter Ellison Rudd Watts in 2010, she had spent 11 years as a Wall Street litigator with prominent firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
She has also been prominent in both writing and speaking about issues such as diversity, a key issue in the legal profession where over 60 per cent of new graduates are women although a far lower percentage reach partnership level, as well as women’s rights.
A mother of three young children herself, she is a partner at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts where she carries out a range of high level legal work for financial institutions and those in the public sector, including acting in regulatory and litigation matters involving complex disputes, insurance, fraud, money laundering, fair trading, food safety and other matters.
She has acted for finance companies facing FMA action following their failure, as well as acting on Canterbury and Wellington earthquake issues and representing the Pike River directors and officers following the mine tragedy.
Here significant legal abilities have been recognised in New Zealand by independent research from Chambers, The APL 500, Legal Media Group and NZ Lawyer.
And now she eclipses our other 30+ finalist nominees to become LawFuel’s Lawyer of the Year.
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