General liability claims are becoming more frequent and complex. Anna McElhinney, special counsel at Wotton + Kearney in Auckland, is a specialist in the area, and as a presenter at this year’s New Zealand Liability Conference, she will be sharing insights drawn from her extensive personal experience in property damage, public liability and professional indemnity claims.

Born in New Zealand, McElhinney had worked as a judge’s clerk and spent time prosecuting for the Crown when she won a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a Master of Law at New York’s Columbia University. 

“That was in the 2009-10 academic year, during the GFC [global financial crisis], so there was no work to be had in New York at the end of my master’s,” she says. “I decided to try London and was lucky enough to get a job — my first role in insurance litigation.”

She moved back to New Zealand in 2012 to join the insurance team of the firm that would eventually become DLA Piper.

“This was quite a general practice, so I had an opportunity to work across lots of different defence and coverage matters,” she says. 

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