Law Society elects Gisborne lawyer Tiana Epati, its first female Pacific Island president

Tiana Epati will start her new role in April next year. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand Law Society has elected its first female president of Pacific Island descent.

Gisborne lawyer Tiana Epati will take over from Kathryn Beck, who completes her three-year term in April.

Epati, 43, is also the youngest president and will be the fourth woman in the role since the first president was elected in 1897.

Epati, a partner with Gisborne law firm Rishworth Wall & Mathieson, was president of the Law Society in Gisborne from 2014 to 2016 and was elected vice-president for the Central North Island in April 2016.

She was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in September 2000 after graduating from the University of Auckland, before spending four years as a Crown prosecutor with Auckland law firm Meredith Connell.

She later moved to Wellington to work as a Crown prosecutor and in the public law team at Izard Weston.

After moving to the Crown Law Office to work on the criminal law team in 2008, Epati moved to Gisborne four years later where she has worked as a criminal defence lawyer with Rishworth Wall & Mathieson.

One of Epati's first challenges in her new role will be tackling what Beck has described as "a cultural crisis in the New Zealand legal profession".

In late May, the Law Society released a survey which found one in five lawyers had been sexually harassed in their workplace.

The same results showed about one in three female lawyers have been sexually harassed at some point in their career.

The confidential online survey saw 3516 lawyers take part and was most thorough examination of the legal profession's workplace environment after a series of scandals hit the country's top law firms.

Most notable have been the allegations at law firm Russell McVeagh.

The New Zealand Law Society, the national lawyers' organisation and regulator, has had 30 presidents in its history.