Long-term Insights Briefing 2025

Overview

The Ministry of Justice is consulting on a draft of its second Long-term Insights Briefing. Our topic is the future operation of the courts and justice services.

A well-functioning court system is critical to New Zealand’s social and economic wellbeing. The environment that the courts and justice services operate in has changed significantly in the last few decades, however, and will continue to change rapidly. In particular, the pace of technological development and the declining trust in institutions are becoming increasingly important context.

The court system’s workload is demand driven. The amount of business the court system deals with has been growing slowly but steadily in recent decades. This growth has been putting pressure on its operations and workforce. Various measures have been put in place to manage the growth, but balancing the cost of running the court system with access to justice remains a challenge.

There are long-standing concerns about barriers to accessing justice. These concerns include the cost of lawyers and of travelling to court, and that the system isn’t working well for everyone.

We believe there are some straightforward areas where we just need to keep innovating or working to embed change that everyone agrees is useful. Using digital technology to help with administrative tasks is one example.

Other opportunities highlighted through this process are strategic choices for decision-makers, however. These choices are:

• whether we should find ways to address unmet legal need

• whether we should undertake structural reform of the court system

• whether we should substantially increase assistance with navigation in the courts

• whether we should consider more ambitious use of AI

• whether there should be greater use of remote participation

• whether we should more actively shape the future workforce for the court system.

We are interested in your views on this thinking. You can find the draft Long-term Insights Briefing here. Your feedback will be used to refine our ideas and inform our final Long-term Insights Briefing.

If you are short of reading time, an outline of the key points in the draft Long-term Insights Briefing is available as a standalone document. We are also publishing a data trends story about what's been going on in the courts as a companion document to the draft Long-term Insights Briefing.

Privacy Disclaimer

Your feedback is subject to the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). Any request under the OIA that includes identifying information will need to be considered in line with the OIA. If your feedback is within scope of an OIA request for information, the Ministry is required to release the information unless one of the withholding grounds of the OIA apply.

The Ministry can withhold personal details under the OIA, including your name and address. Please clearly indicate in your submission if you consider your name, or any other identifying information, should not be released under the OIA and why, and we will take that into account in the event of a request. For example, some information may be commercially sensitive or personal.

The Privacy Act 2020 governs how the Ministry collects and uses the personal information about you and your submission. You have the right to access and correct personal information.

Contact

You can make a submission through the Ministry’s website, by using the survey on the Consultation page. Alternatively, you can email your submission to LTIB@justice.govt.nz. Submissions need to be received by 9 November.