LawFest 2026 drew a record 570-plus delegates to the Viaduct Events Centre in March, not September

LawFest 2026 — New Zealand's premier legal innovation and technology conference and trade expo — ran across 11 and 12 March 2026 at Auckland's Viaduct Events Centre, drawing more than 570 attendees. Organisers describe it as the largest edition in the event's history, and it was the first to run over two days, pairing the long-established conference with a free Expo and Networking Afternoon.

The scale matters in a New Zealand context. A 570-delegate professional conference with a 40-plus stand exhibition floor and two evening networking functions is a genuine mid-size business event, and LawFest is the only fixture on the New Zealand calendar that brings the legal profession and the technology sector together at that scale.

Who runs it

LawFest is operated by Andrew King of LegalInnovate, a group of brands built to connect the legal industry with the technology sector. King is named on the LawFest site as the conference organiser and the direct contact for sponsorship, and he signs off the event's post-show reporting personally — this is an independently owned event, not an association-run congress.

LawNews, the publication of The Law Association of New Zealand, reported in March 2026 that King is not a lawyer. He came into the legal world through litigation support roles at Pinsent Masons and Mayer Brown in London between 1998 and 2008, later helped build Bell Gully's first litigation support function, and worked with the High Court Rules Committee on the development of New Zealand's 2012 e-discovery rules. He founded LawFest in 2013 after visiting firms around the country and concluding that lawyers could see technology coming but did not yet see why they needed to change.

The first LawFest was a gathering of fewer than 70 people. LawNews reports attendance had grown past 400 by 2024; the 2026 edition's 570-plus is a further step up. That is thirteen editions of continuous build, through the Christchurch earthquakes and Covid-19 — both of which, King told LawNews, shifted technology in the profession from a nice-to-have to a must-have.

Who it is for, and what was on the programme

The audience is law firm partners and leaders, in-house counsel, legal operations and innovation staff, and the legal technology vendor community, drawn from across Aotearoa and from Australia.

Day One in 2026 was the new Expo and Networking Afternoon, free to attend, opening the exhibition floor to the wider profession — a deliberate response, King said, to firms whose budgets stretch to only one conference ticket. Day Two carried the conference proper, MC'd by Janey Haringa, with 20-plus speakers.

Australian futurist Steve Sammartino opened with a keynote arguing that AI should be read as a language-based revolution rather than a threat to legal work. Ben Gilbert of Microsoft ANZ followed with the "legal frontier department" concept. A responsible-AI panel brought together Dr Sarah Mitchell, Joy Guo and Rick Shera on governance, ethics and transparency. Moores chief executive Tessa van Duyn set out her firm's move off billable hours to value-based pricing. Barrister Josh McBride ran a practical session on making AI reliable in real legal environments. Two panels — Working Differently, and Reimagining the Legal Workforce, the latter moderated by The Law Association of New Zealand chief executive Clayton Kimpton — covered leadership, culture and the changing shape of junior legal roles. The perennial Tech Talks closed out the practical end of the programme.

The Law Association was a Platinum sponsor in 2026 and covered the conference through its own newsroom, an unusually strong independent record for a privately run New Zealand event.

The venue

The Viaduct Events Centre sits at 161 Halsey Street in Wynyard Quarter, on Auckland's waterfront, and is operated by Auckland Conventions, Venues and Events under Tātaki Auckland Unlimited. It runs to roughly 6,000 square metres over three levels with seven bookable rooms, and is built to five-star environmental standards with glass walls, balconies and direct wharf access.

Capacity is well above what LawFest needed: the full Waiheke rooms seat 2,300 theatre-style, 1,200 banquet, and take 2,850 for cocktails, while the 570-square-metre Kawau Room handles 570 theatre or 700 cocktail. That headroom is what allows a conference plenary, a 40-stand expo hall and an evening function to run in the same building without delegates leaving the site — the single biggest driver of delegate movement at an event of this type, and the reason the two-day, two-format structure worked.

The venue is a few minutes' walk from the city centre. Auckland Conventions lists the Downtown Carpark at 31 Customs Street West as the nearest parking building, with limited parking at Wynyard Quarter, and points delegates to the Auckland Transport bus network. Accommodation in close proximity includes the Park Hyatt Auckland, Sofitel Auckland Viaduct Harbour, QT Auckland, JW Marriott Auckland and Travelodge — a dense CBD hotel cluster within walking distance, which is why waterfront Auckland remains the default for national conferences that draw delegates in by air from around the country.

Why it matters

LawFest is a case study in the association-adjacent, independently owned conference: single-sector, single-city, annual, and now large enough to anchor a downtown Auckland venue for two days with an exhibition and evening functions attached. Its growth curve — under 70 in 2013, 400-plus by 2024, 570-plus in 2026 — tracks the wider recovery and consolidation of New Zealand's professional conference market.

The next edition, LawFest 27, is confirmed for 25 and 26 February 2027, moving along the waterfront to Shed 10 on Queens Wharf. The organiser notes there is no public parking at Shed 10, directing delegates to the Britomart and Downtown car parks, and has listed the Mövenpick Hotel Auckland, about 400 metres from the venue, as the event's accommodation partner.