K3 Insights

Change is Coming: A fairer, faster High Court from 1 January 2026

From 1 January 2026, a major reform will reshape how civil cases are managed in New Zealand’s High Court. These changes, known as the High Court (Improved Access to Civil Justice) Amendment Rules 2025, are designed to make litigation faster, fairer, and less expensive. The new system introduces clearer steps, encourages cooperation between lawyers and parties, and aims to shift courtroom culture towards solving disputes proportionately and efficiently.

The Objective: Justice by Proportionate Means 

At the heart of the new rules is an “overriding objective” (new rule 1.2): “To secure the just resolution of any proceeding or interlocutory application by proportionate means, including by securing its speedy and inexpensive determination.”

This means judges, lawyers, and parties must consider how best to resolve issues fairly, quickly, and without unnecessary expense. The Court will also look at how best to allocate its limited resources across all cases.

Complementing this is a new duty to cooperate (new rule 1.2A), which requires parties, their lawyers, and counsel to work together in good faith to achieve that overriding objective. The aim is to move away from litigation as a “battlefield” and towards an efficient process focused on genuine dispute resolution.

Key Changes:

“Evidence First” Model

Under the current system, parties exchange a large amount of discovery material before evidence is filed. This has often delayed cases and inflated costs.

From 2026, the focus shifts to “evidence first,” which means witness statements and key documents will need to be provided earlier. This helps everyone understand the real issues from the start and encourages early resolution.

Parties will now need to provide an enhanced initial disclosure of relevant documents (new rule 8.4) when filing their first pleadings (statement of claim or defence). These must include not only documents relied on but also those adverse to the party’s position, verified by affidavit. Additional disclosure may only occur by agreement or order of a Judge, and only if it serves the proportionality objective.

Consistent with this “evidence first for efficiency” approach, only certain interlocutory applications (applications listed in the new rule 7.4(8) will be dealt with at an early stage of a proceeding. Other types of interlocutory applications will ordinarily be determined later in the proceeding, likely after the Judicial Issues Conference. By doing so, the new system seeks to streamline interlocutory applications so that the entire proceeding is dealt with more quickly and efficiently.

Factual witness statements and draft chronologies will also need to be filed in the early stages of the proceeding, prior to a Judicial Issues Conference. Statements will need to be concise and focus on relevant facts the witness has personal experience of or involvement in and will be able to recollect. These changes aim to identify early on which facts are truly disputed, allowing parties to tailor their approach to collecting evidence accordingly.

The Judicial Issues Conference

Traditional case management conferences will be replaced by a mandatory Judicial Issues Conference. This will be a structured meeting with a Judge, held after pleadings and evidence are filed. Both parties (and their representatives) must attend and present position papers setting out their view of the case and key documents. The Judge will help narrow the issues, set clear timetables, and ensure the case moves efficiently towards resolution or trial.

Other Significant Changes

As trials will primarily focus on key documents and evidence, Judges will rely more on the contemporaneous documents themselves, reducing repetitive or irrelevant testimony. The result should be shorter, more focused trials that get to the heart of the dispute more quickly.

One of the changes will therefore be how documents are received into evidence at trial. Documents in the common bundle will automatically be received into evidence and presumed to be admissible if referred to in a witness statement, chronology, or opening submissions (new rule 9.5). This does not mean that parties cannot object to their admissibility; however, it will be up to the Court to make the final determination.

Management of expert evidence will also undergo significant change, where now there will only be one expert per party per topic (new rule 9.36AAA). This change seeks to ensure that expert evidence is properly directed at the same issues, rather than experts being at cross-purposes.

What this means for clients

These changes aim to make the High Court process faster, by getting cases to reach resolution earlier, and cheaper by reducing discovery and working towards fewer procedural disputes.

However, the reality for clients could be that these changes may do little to keep legal costs down. Though the changes may bring less drawn-out litigation and therefore lower litigation costs, clients should also expect higher initial legal fees due to the nature of the new system bringing out more front-loaded work. Lawyers will need to prepare evidence and documents much earlier. So even if overall litigation costs will likely be lower, the initial legal fees may be higher, which may nullify the original objective of cheaper legal costs.

Final thoughts

These changes, though they aim towards creating a more accessible justice system for all and may be more efficient in the long run, will likely create some initial frustrations for clients and lawyers alike as everyone rushes to adjust to the new system.