Welcome to Pier Law

Pier Law was established by Bill and Stephanie Herbison on 1 July 1996.

Bill was previously a partner at Spiller Rutledge in their New Brighton branch and that firm was winding up.  Bill and Stephanie decided to take over the premises and start up their own law firm.

They decided on the name ‘Pier Law’ as Bill had been a founding member of the Pier Trust, whose primary purpose was to build the New Brighton Pier.  Given Bill’s involvement in the New Brighton community and with the Pier, they thought ‘Pier Law’ would be a suitable name for their new law firm.

The New Brighton Pier officially opened on 1 November 1997.

The firm had outgrown it’s small premises, upstairs at 184 Shaw Avenue.  The firm moved into a slightly bigger two story building on the corner of Shaw Avenue and Seaview Road in New Brighton.

The firm branched out and opened it’s second office in Kaiapoi in 2007.

Bill and Stephanie saw Kaiapoi as an up and coming area, and having moved out to North Canterbury themselves years earlier, saw this as an opportunity to open another office.

The office was previously a residential dwelling, so it took some time to convert this into an office space.

In September 2010, Canterbury suffered its first major earthquake.  This affected Kaiapoi significantly, however as the office was out of the main commercial zone there was very minimal damage to the building, and we were able to continue working.

In 2011, Canterbury suffered it’s second major earthquake.

The New Brighton area was badly affected – there was no working power, water, or sewer.  As a result, we packed up the New Brighton office and moved everything to our Kaiapoi office which remained unaffected.

This time was extremely stressful, the team had to get up to speed quickly with earthquake matters and buying and selling properties in an earthquake environment.  Being in the east and in Kaiapoi, there were a lot of red zoned clients we were acting for.  There was an immediate and huge influx of work and there was no training or guidance on the processes, the staff were learning as they went.

Pier Law opened its third branch in 2012 in the Styx Mill area – this was located in the Styx Mill Country Club complex.  This was our most central of our now three office locations in Canterbury.

In 2015, the firm incorporated and became Pier Law Limited.

Caroline Davey was appointed as a Director of the firm in 2015.  Since joining Pier Law in 2007, Caroline has made a significant contribution to the firm through her involvement in developing and training staff, precedents, and modernising the way the firm offers its legal services.

Due to growing staff numbers, Pier Law moved the New Brighton office into a new premises.  This new premises was back into the original building where Pier Law was established in 1996 – 184 Shaw Avenue.  Latterly, this building was home to the ANZ Earthquake Centre.

On 25 March 2020, COVID hit, and we went into Alert Level 4 lockdown.  All Pier Law staff were able to work from home, thanks to the move to laptops only a month earlier.

This was an extremely stressful time for the Directors and Practice Manager as they were trying to keep the firm afloat, staff employed, and servicing clients in such an unknown environment.

On 1 May 2021, Pier Law merged with another Christchurch firm, Strowan Law.  This merge bought a significant amount of experience to the firm, along with a different facet to the practice with a reliance on Family Law.

On 3 July 2021, the firm celebrated its 25th anniversary by hosting a dinner party at Britten Stables for all of its current staff, together with some special guests who had assisted the firm in its last 25 years.

Pier Law created a new position in the firm, a People and Culture Coordinator.  Their focus is to look after our team, establish and maintain a good firm culture, and to focus on the mental well being of our people.  The Directors identified that the legal industry is notoriously bad for poor mental health, and this is something we wanted to see change.

In June 2023 after outgrowing our Styx Mill office, we moved our team into a new premises in the Northwood Supa Centa.

This premises is more easily accessible, visible, and easier for our clients to find parks.  It is also a bigger and more professional space to meet with our clients, and gives us space to grow our team.  Even better, it is not too far from where our Styx Mill office was located.