Meet this year’s NZLSA Paper Presentation Competition winner

Extensive research, writing, fact-finding and spoken delivery – all of these are essential skills for an aspiring lawyer. But while law students have plenty of opportunities to hone their skills throughout their studies, many don’t see a chance to put them into practice until they begin their career.

As a global provider of legal technology solutions, LexisNexis is a familiar name to most law students in New Zealand. In 2017, LexisNexis began looking for ways to engage with and support law students in their studies. This led to a partnership with the New Zealand Law Students Association (NZLSA), and in 2023, the launch of the Paper Presentation Competition – a chance for law students to research, write and present a paper on a legal topic of their choice.

The regional winners of the New Zealand competition also get to compete in Australia against 35 Australian law schools. In 2023 this opportunity was won by University of Otago student Jaiden Tucker, who went on to successfully claim the Australasian title.

NZ Lawyer spoke to Tucker about his participation in the Paper Presentation, and the research paper that won him first place in New Zealand and Australia.

“Each stage was helpful for every part of the legal process”

“I first came across the competition on our university notices page, and I thought a free trip to Sydney sounded nice,” Tucker told NZ Lawyer.

“But each stage was actually really helpful for a different part of the legal process. The written stage obviously involves a lot of research, and being able to get to the core of issues and find the most pertinent information.”

“The presentation part is great for communication skills and spoken ability, and the Q&A portion was really good for being able to think quickly on your feet,” he explains.

“A question is often designed with a certain goal in mind, and so being able to get to the core of what’s being asked and give the answer they’re looking for is a skill which is useful in so many areas.”

Tucker’s paper is titled Exploring a Brave New World: Unpacking the Implications of China’s Data Legislation, and it analyses the Chinese government’s legislation to regulate, restrict and protect data.

It looks at the legislation in the context of preexisting legal and academic commentary on what data protection looks like, and goes on to address the ramifications of adding this new approach to data into the global environment.

Tucker highlights the very different approaches taken by the US, the EU and China, and comments on the aim and rationale of each approach.

“The US, Australia and New Zealand have gone for a very under-regulated approach where they try to let the market correct for any potential harms,” Tucker explains.

“The EU has gone for a very rights-centric approach, where people’s individual rights are protected very heavily through legislation. China has come in with an entirely different approach, focusing primarily on protection of the interests of the state. My paper explores the various implications of each, and broadly finds the EU approach to be substantially more preferable to the US or Chinese approaches.”

“Obviously there’s a difference in preference for outcomes,” he adds.

“The Western liberal approach prefers the rights of the individual, while the Confucian Chinese approach prefers stability and order above individual harms, and so I’ve tried to recognise those differences and deal with them as best as I can.”

The paper also looks at interactions between jurisdictions, and the potential for overlap in legislation. Tucker notes that the US and China both have the ability within their domestic legislation to access data held by foreign companies, which brings about the potential of regulatory conflict.

“Implications of that are already being seen in the legal sphere, where Dentons recently decoupled from its verein agreement with Dacheng in China,” he says.

“My third argument regards the distribution of digital authoritarianism into the global South, and why the Chinese model proliferates a particularly pervasive form of authoritarian control. It allows for a strong version of authoritarianism, which has potentially harmful implications for what those regimes will look like in the future.”

Taking the competition to Australia

For Tucker, participating in the Paper Presentation wasn’t just a chance to hone his own writing, research and speaking skills. It was also an opportunity to get a glimpse into diverse and interesting areas of law that he hadn’t studied in depth before.

In Australia, Tucker competed against a paper on the Australian police’s access to metadata, while his New Zealand competitor presented a paper on Tikanga and the Waitangi Tribunal.

“The chance I had to watch the others present their papers was equally as rewarding as being able to improve my own, because I got insights into several areas of law that I hadn’t engaged with in that much depth,” Tucker said.

“But beyond all of the specific benefits, the people I met were really incredible. The broader community of friends I made, particularly the group of New Zealanders who I went to compete in Sydney with – they’re connections that I’ll hopefully be friends with for a long time into the future.”

According to Simon Laracy, strategic relationship manager – academic at LexisNexis, all of the research submitted to the Paper Presentation was of an extremely high calibre. He says that the level of insight paints a very bright picture of the future of the legal industry, particularly as new precedents are set and old precedents are increasingly challenged.

“The competition papers are marked by lecturers, and the feedback has been that the calibre, insight and level of research have been very high – and that’s really encouraging,” Laracy comments.

“It was extremely exciting to see that from the law student cohort. Over the last ten years, the precedents in law have been challenged by those who have thought outside of the box and have been creative in their application of law. The Paper Presentation shows that this very much exists in the next generation.”

To read Jaiden Tucker’s full winning research paper, click here.

To learn more about the NZLSA Paper Presentation Competition, click here.

To participate in the next edition of the NZLSA Paper Presentation Competition, contact the competition organizers at your law school or reach out to NZLSA for more information by submitting the form here.