Environmental Law Prize Awarded

Full-time lawyer and part-time student Nikki Edwards has won Waikato University's annual environmental law prize, awarded by national law firm Simpson Grierson.

Edwards completed conjoint law and management degrees in 2003 and worked in Treasury for a time before starting work at Hamilton's Harkness Henry. "My management majors were in economics and finance and I thought commercial law would be my career," says Ms Edwards, "but then I decided I wanted to be more involved in problem solving and liked the idea of more court work and I found myself being drawn to environment law. With the Resource Management Act being quite a specialised statute, I knew I needed to upskill."

She enrolled in Waikato Law School's fourth year Environmental Law paper and came top of the class. Her high marks secured her the Simpson Grierson Prize of $1,000 and she's now working in Harkness Henry's environmental law team.

Trevor Daya-Winterbottom from the Law School says the environment paper is demanding with a strong practical base that covers all aspects of resource management including submissions and appeals against plans, consent applications, enforcement and prosecution. "It's got a strong practical base and we get leading practitioners along to talk about real cases and situations," he says.

Ms Edwards says she found the paper directly relevant to her job. "I am applying the skills I learned from the paper every day - just one example would be interpreting council plans - and the paper has put me in a strong position to develop my career in environmental law."

Nikki Edwards travelled to Auckland to receive her award from Simpson Grierson chairman Kevin Jaffe. The firm has been offering the Waikato environmental law prize for 17 years.

PRIZE WINNERS: Nikki Edwards (third from left) with Trevor Daya-Winterbottom from Waikato Law School, Simpson Grierson partner Paddy McNamara, Law School Dean Brad Morse, Chairman of Simpson Grierson Kevin Jaffe and Simpson Grierson partner Heather Ash.