Tafaoimalo Tologata Professor Leilani Tuala-Warren has been appointed Dean of Te Piringa Faculty of Law, at the University of Waikato.
Professor Tuala-Warren has been part of the University of Waikato since the 1990s, when she completed undergraduate and Master of Laws degrees before beginning her legal career in Samoa. Serving as a state solicitor in Samoa’s Office of the Attorney-General from 1998 to 2000, she returned to the University to teach for five years before embarking on private practice in Samoa.
In 2009 Professor Tuala-Warren became Executive Director of the Samoa Law Reform Commission, before becoming the second woman in Samoa to be appointed as a judge of the District Court several years later.
As a newly appointed judge, she established a Family Court and the only Family Violence Court in the Pacific outside New Zealand. Appointment as Supreme Court Judge of Samoa followed in 2016, as well as recognition with a University of Waikato Distinguished Alumni Award in 2022.
Tafaoimalo returned to the University in 2023, becoming New Zealand’s first Pacific woman appointed a Professor of Law. According to the university she becomes New Zealand’s first Pacific Dean of Law, while retaining a temporary judicial warrant as a Supreme Court Justice in Samoa.
