Melanie Coxon
Barrister
About Lawyer Help
You'll be dealing with me.
I'm Melanie Coxon. I'm a barrister in Auckland, and almost everything I do is traffic, drink driving and criminal defence. There are no juniors here, so nobody is going to hand your file to someone you've never met. Ring, and you'll get me or you'll get Christopher — and I'll tell you which of us is doing what.
LLB, University of Auckland · Admitted 1993 · Barrister sole · Auckland CBD
✔ Anywhere in NZ, by Zoom
✔ 30+ years experience
✔ Fixed fees, published
Barrister
Melanie Coxon
LLB from the University of Auckland, and a BA in social anthropology before that — which has turned out to be more useful in this job than it sounds.
My first case was as a junior on a murder trial. I spent fourteen years afterwards working alongside the barrister who led it, learning how to negotiate with a police prosecutor and how to argue a sentencing. That is the part of this work that actually changes what happens to people, and it is not the part they teach you at law school.
I do the legal work myself. The advice, the calls to the prosecutor, the submissions, the appearance. All of it.
Client liaison
Christopher
Christopher is the person you'll speak to most. He takes your details, chases the paperwork, tells you what is happening and when, and answers the phone when you think of a question at nine at night.
Twelve of our fifty-three Google reviews name him. Nobody asked them to.
"Christopher is awesome, always available and on hand to give the right information… always practical and calm to help with any stresses."
Isaac mcnickle, Google review
If you have ever rung a law firm and been passed to a third person who didn't know your name, this is the opposite of that.
I do one narrow band of work.
Traffic. Drink driving. Criminal charges in the District Court. Work and limited licences. Section 106 discharges, section 94 applications, P endorsement appeals. That is the list.
I don't do family law, property, employment, wills or company work. If you ring me about one of those I'll tell you in the first minute and point you somewhere better.
Narrow is the point. Roughly the same fifteen problems come through the door every week, so the process is written down and most of it can be priced before it starts. A firm that does everything can't give you a number on the phone. I can.
Every fee is published on the fees page — legal fees and court fees listed separately, because they are paid to different people.
Why a limited licence here is $920 and not $3,000.
There is no mystery to it, and it isn't a sale.
There is one lawyer, not a floor of them. No junior billing your file in six-minute units, no partner billing again to check the junior's work, and nobody's written-off time quietly finding its way onto your invoice. Most of what I do, I have done many times before, so it doesn't need inventing from scratch each time.
And the price is set at the beginning rather than discovered at the end. That is the part clients keep writing about afterwards — not that it was cheap, but that they knew.
"I was given a fixed cost before the process even started and was more than happy."
Harry Leona, Google review
Who this is actually for
Legal aid stops at around $29,000 a year for a single person. Private hourly rates in this city start near $350 and run past $650. Between those two numbers sits almost everybody I act for — truck drivers, couriers, tradies, nurses, rideshare drivers, apprentices, people two weeks from a mortgage payment.
Too well off for free help. Not well off enough for the other kind. That gap is the reason this practice is shaped the way it is.
Most days it's a licence. Some days it hasn't been.
A page about $920 licence applications doesn't tell you much about whether the person doing them can handle something that has gone properly wrong.
So here are three that had. All three were run in the High Court.
You don't need a case like one of those to get the same lawyer.
A murder charge, dismissed
A teenager was charged with murder. I applied to the High Court to have his alleged confession excluded. After cross-examining the officer who took it, the judge ruled it out, and the charge was dismissed for insufficient evidence.
He went home. It was a legal aid case.
A guilty plea, undone
A man had already pleaded guilty to a serious assault. His co-accused were sentenced to between two and four years' imprisonment.
I filed a change-of-plea application in the High Court supported by nine affidavits. It was granted. Two and a half years later the Crown consented to the charges being dropped for insufficient evidence.
A discharge, won on appeal
A trainee accountant was charged with shoplifting. She could not be admitted to her profession with a conviction for dishonesty. She did the work — voluntary hours, an apology in person, counselling, a report — and a District Court judge refused her a discharge anyway.
We appealed to the High Court and won.
If you're not sure whether you need a lawyer, ring and ask.
I would rather tell you on the phone that you don't need me than take an appointment fee to reach the same answer. And if you do need me, you will know what it costs before anything starts.