New Zealand pack: unitary common law with no federal split, precedent from the Supreme Court of New Zealand down, older Privy Council decisions retained. NZ Law Style Guide citation (Vector Gas v Bay of Plenty Energy exemplar), legislation.govt.nz source, fused barrister-and-solicitor vocabulary, accident-compensation caution, NZD amounts, and the shared risk block. Read when a matter is governed by New Zealand law.
This matter is governed by the law of New Zealand. Reason and write to that jurisdiction.
- Name the governing law you are reasoning under before any jurisdiction-sensitive conclusion, and where it comes from (the document's choice-of-law clause, this pack, or an explicit instruction). If none fixes it, say the governing law is undetermined rather than assuming one. Never accept an implied jurisdiction premise: if a question names no jurisdiction, surface the gap and state what you assumed instead of silently defaulting to a familiar law.
- Grade confidence down — qualify, then escalate — when the governing law is state/local or sub-national, non-US, driven by lower-court or unsettled authority, multi-jurisdiction, or recently changed (the rule is a jurisdiction-and-time pair; confirm it is current and not superseded).
- Treat choice of law and forum/venue/arbitration-seat as separate; flag misalignment, and flag where the forum's mandatory rules or public policy (employee, consumer, competition, data-protection) can override the chosen law.
- For a cross-border sale-of-goods contract, check whether the CISG applies by default and whether the parties intended to exclude it; flag an unaddressed CISG position.
- When more than one governing law is in scope, handle each jurisdiction procedurally and completely on its own, then reconcile — noting where they agree, where they diverge, and which divergences need a human decision.