Royden Hindle and Dr Anna Kirk have released their Inaugural Aotearoa New Zealand Arbitration Survey, a comprehensive report that uses data to reveal the number of arbitrations in New Zealand every year, the types of cases, the costs involved, the time taken to complete the task, plus data on the age, gender and ethnicity of arbitrators.

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This important document was completed in collaboration with the New Zealand Dispute Resolution Centre, and Diana Qiu. 

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Royden Hindle and Dr Anna Kirk intend this document to be a resource for encouraging and enhancing the practice of arbitration in New Zealand. It is free to access and is available to download on this page, under resources. 

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Excerpt from The Inaugural Aotearoa New Zealand Arbitration Survey’s Overview:

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“The confidential nature of arbitration makes it inherently difficult to know how often it is used in New Zealand.  Until now, discussion has effectively been anecdotal only.

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In 2021, we embarked on a project with NZDRC to survey and report on the number of arbitrations being conducted in New Zealand, the nature of those arbitrations, and the characteristics of the arbitrators conducting them.  

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Our attempt to provide some empirical data about the nature and extent of arbitration in New Zealand is based on our own observation that arbitration is more entrenched, and more often used, than may be apparent to the broader legal community. The results of our survey certainly demonstrate that arbitration is a staple of the modern dispute resolution landscape. It makes up a significant part of determinative dispute resolution in New Zealand and works in a complementary way to alleviate the workload of the Courts in respect of civil disputes.

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We conclude from the survey results that there has been a maturing of the arbitration market in New Zealand. We have found a spread of disputes that are conducted by a range of arbitrators in a broad cross-section of legal areas. Arbitration is no longer dominated by construction disputes, but covers contractual and commercial disputes, property disputes, Treaty settlement cases, and many other subjects besides.  

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We hope you will find the information in this report to be useful. It is intended to provide a resource for encouraging and enhancing the practice of arbitration in New Zealand. It justifies confidence in a system that is found to be working well.

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We wish to express our sincere thanks to the New Zealand Dispute Resolution Centre (NZDRC), and in particular Natalia Villa, who provided all of the technical support to enable the survey to happen, and to assemble the data into a useable form. NZDRC also assisted in preparing the charts and graphics in this report and in editing it into publishable form. We would not have been able to conduct the survey without the support of NZDRC.

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We also wish to express our sincere thanks to Diana Qiu, who provided invaluable assistance in the preparation of this report and in turning the raw data into reportable information.”

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Download The Inaugural Aotearoa New Zealand Arbitration Survey, see Resources.