About Mark

Mark Colthart is an Auckland Barrister, who practises exclusively as an independent dispute resolver.

He accepts appointment as arbitrator, adjudicator, expert determiner, mediator, and facilitator of expert conferences, in commercial, construction and property disputes.

Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts (Psychology), University of Canterbury, 1993

Bachelor of Laws, University of Canterbury, 1993

Admitted as a Barrister & Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, 1994

Master of Laws (Hons), University of Auckland, 2001

Fellow (Arbitration) of the Arbitrators’ & Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand, 2012

Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, 2012

Fellow of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, 2022

Biography

Mark has practised at the independent bar since 2006, and before that was a litigation partner in a national law firm. Across more than thirty years he has argued, and now decides, the disputes that turn on how contracts are written, how buildings are delivered, and how interests in land are held and dealt with.

He has been ranked in Doyle’s Guide as a leading construction and infrastructure dispute resolver for ten consecutive years (2017–2026).

Mark is a member of the Executive of the Property Law Section of the New Zealand Law Society, and is a former Chair of the Property Disputes Committee of The Law Association of New Zealand and a Council Member of the Arbitrators’ & Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand (AMINZ). He has taught on the faculty of the NZLS Litigation Skills course since 2013, and writes and speaks regularly on arbitration, construction and property law.

Parties and their advisers appoint Mark for his extensive experience, sound judgement, commercial understanding and procedural rigour.

He is a founding member of FortyEight Shortland Barristers, in the Vero Centre in central Auckland.