Christmas cheer from the Chair

After another year in the midst of a pandemic it can sometimes be a struggle to remain cheerful, but if we look around, we have many things to be cheerful about, not least of which is the opportunity to take a well-deserved break in our amazing country. It has been a busy year, and we wish to thank all of our clients, and our referrers, for putting their trust in us.

2021 has had its ups and downs, and our thoughts go out to our clients, friends and businesses, particularly those in Auckland, who have endured months of lockdown and the stress resulting from the uncertainty and constant change. I remain optimistic that we will be able to rub shoulders again without mask wearing, showing passes, and scanning codes. Our freedoms have been restricted, and our obedience tested, but I think the true wairua, or spirit, of New Zealand is still strong.

In September we celebrated our 125^th anniversary in business. While the restrictions put an end to our proposed evening celebrating our Firm and community, we were able to shift part of those celebrations online. For those that haven’t already seen it, a link to our short anniversary video is here and on the home page of our website. Our history and our connection with our community is something we are very proud of and the video captures that. We were also able to support 14 local charities this year as a way of celebrating our presence in the community.

As 2021 draws to a close, Bill Chapman, John Gordon and Alasdair Christie step back from the partnership after more than 100 years of service to Sharp Tudhope between them!  All three will continue as consultants to the Firm, and we are pleased about that because of their huge levels of knowledge and experience.

We are excited for the future with 13 new team members joining us in 2021. The expertise of our commercial team has grown this year with Partner, James Dow joining us in March and Senior Associate, Tracy Tomsett shortly thereafter. We also welcomed Law Clerk, Meg Skilton and have Senior Associate Keryn Anderson joining us early next year.  In the property team, Senior Associate Aimee Edwards and Law Clerk Kate Bennett joined the team in the last quarter of this year.  We are pleased to have another three new lawyers starting their careers with us in January 2022. Caity Creswell and Millie Quinn will join our property team, and Beatrice Holman will start in our commercial team. We also look forward to welcoming Car San Diego to our property team early in the new year. Car who will be known to a number of people in Tauranga, having spent the last five years working with other local law firms.

We look forward to a fresh focus in 2022, and hope to continue to do excellent, thorough and careful legal work for you, our clients. To make a good job of 2022 we all need to take some time to restore ourselves, so we should all take some advice from a song I heard on the radio the other day whilst driving to work and, “take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while; you can afford to lose a day or two”.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy festive season.