The person behind Lex Praxis — and why employment law and AI are a more natural combination than most people expect.
I started my legal career as in-house counsel in South Africa before moving into private practice as a barrister, specialising in employment law. Across more than 20 years of practice — in tribunals, in negotiations, across advisory and advocacy roles in South Africa and New Zealand — I developed a deep understanding of what employment law actually requires: good judgment, careful documentation, procedural precision, and the ability to explain complex things simply to people under pressure.
When I moved to New Zealand, I continued that work as a legal consultant and practice manager — and in other roles that kept legal rigour at the centre: research, knowledge management, dispute resolution. Then, after three years away from practice following a health issue, I returned to find a legal landscape that had changed significantly — and a technology that most lawyers were either ignoring or using naively.
I spent considerable time learning AI from the ground up — not at a surface level, but deeply enough to understand where it can be trusted and where it cannot. The cases where lawyers have been disciplined for AI failures are not failures of technology — they are failures of judgment about what AI is and isn't good for. That is a legal skills problem, not a technology problem.
Lex Praxis exists because there is a specific gap in the NZ market: an advisor who can sit between the technology and the law — who understands both well enough to be honest about both. Not a tech company selling AI to lawyers. Not a law firm dabbling in AI on the side. Something built specifically for this moment.
Employment law is where AI has the most immediate practical application and the highest stakes for getting it wrong. The documents are high-volume and high-stakes simultaneously — a warning letter drafted carelessly can cost an employer a personal grievance. An ERA determination summarised incorrectly can lead to bad advice. The Good Faith obligations in the Employment Relations Act require a human judgment that AI cannot replicate.
At the same time, AI is genuinely transformative for employment law practice when used correctly. The volume of drafting, the speed of research, the ability to stress-test a position before mediation — all of these change significantly. The lawyers who understand both dimensions will work differently to those who don't.
That is what I built Lex Praxis to teach.