James ['Jim'] Farmer practises as a barrister from Chambers in Auckland.
He is a King’s Counsel, admitted to practise as such in New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. In addition, he has been admitted to appear on a case by case basis as a non-resident King’s Counsel in Hong Kong. He has University degrees from the University of Auckland – Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws with First Class Honours – and from the University of Cambridge – Ph.D, for which he was awarded the Yorke Prize. He has held academic positions at Auckland, including an appointment as a part-time Professor of Law, and Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His field of practice covers all areas of commercial law and public law. He is particularly known for the many appearances that he has made as counsel in competition (antitrust) law cases. More...

Latest Legal Commentaries

Theory of the Case

I was recently invited to address a group of young lawyers by a law firm on the subject of “The Theory of the Case”. I had to confess that writing down a theory of the case has not been a practice that I have followed throughout my litigation career. However, I found that there is a considerable volume of articles written on the subject which explain the advantages of doing so in a formal way. One that I found particularly helpful was by a Canadian lawyer, Martin Sclisizzi entitled “Theory of the Case How and Why Developed – an Overview”. Sclisizzi More...

The University of Auckland's Proposal to Merge the Faculties of Law and Business & Economics

On 12 November 2024, the University of Auckland published a proposal to merge the Faculties of Law and of Business and Economics into one Faculty. The proposal includes a division of the Law School into two departments, one focused on private law (including commercial law) and the other on public law.The justification for this radical proposal is stated as follows: “By combining the Faculties of Law and Business & Economics, the aim of the proposal is to create a comprehensive faculty that brings together distinct and complementary disciplinary strength.This proposed combined faculty structure would foster greater collaboration across a wide More...

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