News Item

Two young lawyers, Rebecca Elvin and Matthew Windsor, have jointly won the Law Foundation’s Cleary Memorial Prize for 2010.

The New Zealand Law Foundation presented the prizes at its fifth Annual Awards dinner in Wellington on 24 November.

A former joint dux of St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland, Rebecca graduated from Otago University with first class honours in both her LLB and BA.

As well as volunteering for aid organisations in Thailand and the Philippines, Rebecca’s voluntary service has included being a member of Amnesty International’s Auckland legal network in 2009. She has also volunteered for several other organisations including City Lights, Brothers in Arms and Homes of Hope.

Rebecca is founder of the Not Just Us Trust and organiser of last year’s Just Law: Minds Wide Open conference.

As well as working as a judge’s clerk in the High Court of New Zealand, she has interned at the US Supreme Court, the International Justice Mission in Washington DC and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Rebecca is undertaking an MA at King’s College in the University of London in conflict resolution in divided societies.

Matthew is in New York undertaking an LLM at Columbia Law School, focusing on issues of government liability in domestic and international law.

Matthew was winner of Auckland University’s senior prize in law in 2007, the year he graduated with an LLB (Honours) and a BA.

He has served as a director of the Law in Schools project, a nationwide pro bono organisation designed to educate Year 13 secondary school students about New Zealand’s legal system. He has also been involved in the Equal Justice Project through the University of Auckland which promotes access to justice for refugee and migrant communities. While at Auckland University Matthew was also involved with a voluntary mentoring scheme for junior law students.

Matthew has also been a volunteer at the Wellington Community Law Centre, and a member of and volunteer for Amnesty International.

Matthew has already been published in the Modern Law Review, the New Zealand Law Journal and the Auckland University Law Review, and has presented papers at the ANZSIL and NZ Centre for International Economic Law conferences.

Matthew was a judge’s clerk at the Court of Appeal in 2008-2009. Before leaving to study towards his LLM, he was a junior barrister at Shortland Chambers.

Details of the award and previous winners can be found on the Foundation’s website http://www.lawfoundation.org.nz/scholarships/.