Immigration lawyers in Wellington

There are 4 immigration lawyers based in the Wellington area, and 6 law firms practising immigration law have an office here. Each firm is verified from its own website as practising New Zealand lawyers, who are exempt from immigration adviser licensing; they are regulated by the New Zealand Law Society instead of the IAA. The list below starts with the longest admitted. How this ordering works.

Wellington immigration lawyers by list

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John Steven PetrisPetris Law Office47 years
Kamil LakshmanIdesi Legal26 years
Merlaina DonaldJB Morrison Lawyers23 years
Nicky RobertsonDuncan Cotterill19 years

Showing 4 of 4 immigration lawyers

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Published appeal record of Wellington counsel

105 published appeals name counsel based in Wellington, across 3 of the 4 listed here, most recently 8 July 2026. “Allowed” is the appellant’s share of decided appeals; a percentage is shown only where at least 5 were decided.

Appeal type	Appeals	Allowed	Dismissed
Refugee & protection	47	24% 11 of 46 decided	35
Deportation46 appeals
Non-resident	44	53% 23 of 43 decided	20
Resident	2	1 of 2 decided	1
Residence12 appeals
Partnership	3	2 of 2 decided	0
Dependent child	3	1 of 3 decided	2
Parent	3	0 of 3 decided	3
Sibling & adult child	2	1 of 2 decided	1
Skilled migrant	1	0 of 1 decided	1

Counts come from decisions the tribunal has published and that name a representative we can identify with certainty. Appeals settled, withdrawn or resolved before a decision do not appear, so this is a record of published outcomes rather than of everything a practitioner has done. How matching works is set out in the methodology.

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Immigration appeal success rates in New ZealandAlmost half of decided residence appeals to New Zealand's Immigration and Protection Tribunal succeed: 49% of 8,121 decided residence appeals in the tribunal's published decisions were allowed, sent back to Immigration New Zealand for reassessment, or ended in a grant of residence. Deportation and refugee appeals succeed far less often: 37% of decided non-resident deportation appeals and 21% of decided refugee and protection appeals were allowed. Every figure on this page is computed from the 20,793 decisions the tribunal and its predecessor boards have published, and updates as new decisions appear.Read more

Frequently asked questions

Both can represent you to Immigration New Zealand and at the Immigration and Protection Tribunal. You need a New Zealand lawyer with a current practising certificate if your matter may go to court, or if it crosses into other areas of law such as employment or criminal matters affecting character. 4 immigration lawyers are based in Wellington, alongside 58 licensed immigration advisers.

Search their name on the New Zealand Law Society's public Register of Lawyers, which shows whether a person holds a practising certificate. The 4 immigration lawyers listed here for Wellington were checked against that register as at 7 October 2026. An immigration lawyer never appears on the Immigration Advisers Authority register, because a New Zealand lawyer with a current practising certificate may neither apply for nor hold an immigration adviser licence.

An immigration lawyer based elsewhere in New Zealand may be able to. Section 234 of the Immigration Act 2009 requires the Immigration and Protection Tribunal to decide an appeal on the papers unless section 233 requires or allows an oral hearing, as it does for some deportation and refugee appeals, and the tribunal may hold a hearing by telephone or audiovisual link. Of the immigration lawyers on this site, 88 are based outside Wellington. Whether one takes on your matter is for that immigration lawyer to decide.

Immigration lawyers in other cities

This list is not exhaustive. It is researched from public sources, including the New Zealand Law Society's register, so an immigration lawyer in Wellington may be missing simply because their immigration practice is not identifiable from those sources. Absence here says nothing about an immigration lawyer. Know one who should be listed? Tell us.

How firms are listed and ordered: methodology. See all immigration lawyers in New Zealand.