Zoe Harata
When lawyer Tiana Epati’s King’s Counsel appointment was announced, the phone began to ring with friends, mentors and family calling to celebrate, including her first employer, former Crown Solicitor Simon Moore.
“Tiana, the waitress!” he laughed down the line, still delighted by the memory of how their paths had first crossed decades ago.
Back then, Tiana was a University of Auckland law graduate, waiting tables and wondering how on earth she’d land her first legal job.
“One day, a group of lawyers came in for lunch, all in a rush and very stressed. I had to coordinate the whole thing, have taxis waiting for them and manage the different personalities.”
Turning rejection into opportunity
Then Crown Solicitor Moore was so impressed with her people management skills that a few days later, he invited her to interview for a graduate role at prestigious law firm Meredith Connell. Someone else got the job, but that didn’t stop Tiana. She asked for work experience instead, which eventually led them to create a second graduate position especially for her.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is it. Here’s my shot, and I have to make the absolute best of it,’” recalls Tiana, now 50.
Inspired by her father’s legacy
Raised in her father’s native Samoa until she was 10, even as a young child Tiana wanted to be a lawyer like her dad A’e’au Semi Epati, who went on to become the first Pasifika judge in New Zealand. Growing up in a small Samoan village, A’e’au only learned to speak English at 16 when he came to New Zealand on a government scholarship programme.
After qualifying as a lawyer and returning to Samoa, he opened a small practice. Tiana remembers locals sometimes offering baked goods or livestock as payment.
“He believed knowledge is power and wanted to do something useful to help his people.”
A humble start in Auckland
In 1985, at the age of 10, Tiana moved to Auckland with her mother.
“It was a pretty humbling childhood… but I had the privilege of expectation because my dad always expected I would go to university.”
But once there, it wasn’t always smooth sailing.
“I would often get asked if I got in on the quota system. I had to justify my existence all the time.”
Even as she achieved notable success in her career, she would still sometimes face prejudice.
“People would say, ‘What name is that? Does she speak English? I don’t want a coconut for a lawyer.’”
Breaking barriers in law
“Undeterred, Tiana went from strength to strength. Working for the Crown Law Office, she was lead counsel on 100 cases in the Court of Appeal. She married fellow lawyer Matanuku Mahuika, 57, and had her first two children, Umuariki and Kuraunuhia, now 17 and 14. Then in 2019, Tiana made history as the first person of Polynesian descent to become the president of the New Zealand Law Society, representing 16,000 lawyers. Halfway through her term, she found out she was pregnant at 45 and gave birth to her third child, Ngarangikahiwa, now four. Inspired by then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Tiana “would breastfeed in board meetings, push her pram through the halls of Parliament or see the Chief Justice with my baby strapped to my front – that was just the reality”.
Now living in Gisborne with her family, Tiana also mentors young Pacific Island lawyers.
Dring to dream bigger
“Three years ago, I said to them, ‘What about one of us as King’s Counsel?’ and they just started laughing in disbelief.”
Being appointed King’s Counsel is widely considered the highest honour in her profession, and their reaction made her realise, “If you can’t even conceive of it, you’re never going to put yourself forward
for it.”
She decided to prove it was possible.
“You have to push the boundary on everything and aim far beyond where you think you can get to, then feel the fear and do it anyway. “I don’t want to get to the end of my life with a lot of ‘what ifs’.”
A call from the Attorney General
Laughing, Tiana says she initially ignored Attorney General Judith Collins’ call to inform her of her successful appointment.
“I was about to board a plane to Auckland and thought the unknown number was the prison calling. Then I got a text saying, ‘Tiana, it’s Judith Collins. Can you please take my call?’”
Tiana is believed to be the first Samoan and woman from the Pacific Island community to make King’s Counsel, but she insists the credit belongs not solely to her but also to her wider family and community.
“I look at this as an acknowledgement of all of them – my husband and community and the trailblazers and pioneers… my dad’s generation who came from the village, not even speaking English. “I’m what it looks like when you pour love and support into a person.”
