Barnaby Locke
Senior Associate, WellingtonBarnaby is a senior associate in Bell Gully's employment team. With nearly a decade of specialist employment law experience acting for employers across the public and private sectors, he is a skilled litigator and pragmatic adviser to large organisations.
Barnaby has a particular strength in complex and high-stakes employment litigation and has appeared in the Employment Relations Authority, the Employment Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of New Zealand. His experience includes cases involving triangular employment arrangements and labour-hire, the protection of confidential information through urgent search orders, and disputes concerning collective bargaining and public sector employment. He is experienced in mediation and takes a strategic, results-oriented approach to dispute resolution.
Alongside his litigation practice, Barnaby is a trusted adviser to large organisations in both the public and private sectors. He provides pragmatic, commercially focused guidance on employment relationship issues, restructuring, disciplinary processes, and workplace investigations as well as collective bargaining and industrial disputes. His approach emphasises understanding clients, operational realities and delivering practical solutions.
Barnaby is a regular contributor to employment law discourse and has co-authored articles on ILO obligations in New Zealand employment law, union representation and standing and on reinstatement under the Employment Relations Act.
