Laura wins prestigious NZ Law Foundation Prize
Ex Whanganui High School student, Laura Hardcastle, wins prestigious New Zealand Law Foundation Prize.
Photo by Martin Stewart Timeframe Photography
Laura Hardcastle did well at Whanganui High School becoming the dux in 2008. Later she came top in Law and Geology at Victoria University and gained the Chancellor’s medal of excellence in 2014. She graduated with a first-class honours degree in Law and a BSc in Environmental Science and Geology.
This year she has won the 2018 New Zealand Law Foundation Cleary Memorial Prize. This is a prestigious award given to a young barrister or solicitor who shows outstanding future promise in the legal profession. Laura works as a litigation lawyer at Bell Gully’s Wellington office.
She is also committed to “volunteering and giving back to the community. It is a key part of who I am.” This commitment has led her to do pro bono work for clients in her specialities of medicines and healthcare regulation as well as helping with the Wellington Community Law Centre and Wellington West Citizens Advice Bureau.
She has also mentored two young women law students through Victoria’s Bridging the Gap programme, which pairs practising lawyers with those looking to enter the profession, as well as publishing three legal articles.
Outside of her law career, Laura is a keen writer of fiction, having completed the National Novel Writing Month for the past three years, which is an international challenge to write 50,000 words of original fiction over the month of November.
Another area of her life is studying Te Reo part-time and Laura is determined to enhance understanding of tea o Maori in the legal profession and more generally.
In 2018 she began an LLM choosing the areas of regulation of medical devises to research. She says, “With so many lives depending on technology such as pacemakers, implants and other medical machinery, it is to my mind essential that it is regulated properly.
The New Zealand Law Foundation awards $5,000 annually for the Clearly Memorial Prize.
River City Press 17/1/19