Meet the 'typical' Kiwi lawyer

At the beginning of this month there were 12,224 lawyers who held a current practising certificate in New Zealand. File photo / Thinkstock

If you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, you are likely to be defended by a 38-year-old non-smoker, who works in an Auckland firm with one to three partners and will probably retire at the age of 68.

In its annual snapshot of a typical New Zealand lawyer, the New Zealand Law Society also said the "typical" lawyer was male and had the first name John.

"If the number of women in the legal profession continues to grow at the current rate, our typical lawyer will change sex in 2019," the snapshot said.

Published annually in the Law Society's LawTalk magazine, the snapshot provides a range of information on the country's lawyers and judges.

It showed that at the beginning of this month there were 12,224 lawyers who held a current practising certificate.

Of those, 43 per cent were in the Auckland urban area and a further 19 per cent in Wellington city.

Just over 500 lawyers holding a New Zealand practising certificate were based overseas.

Wellington had the highest proportion of lawyers, with one for every 84 inhabitants. This was well ahead of the next most-lawyered locations, Queenstown (one per 185) and Warkworth (one per 234).

The lowest proportion of lawyers to inhabitants was in Kawerau (one lawyer per 3126 people), followed by Huntly (one per 2292) and Tokoroa (one per 1735).

Overall, there was one lawyer for every 362 people.

The Law Society said the most noticeable trend over the past two decades had been the rise in the proportion of women who were admitted to the legal profession.

While women still comprised only 46 per cent of all lawyers, they made up 62 per cent of lawyers admitted to the profession annually.