"The way that legal practices work now, particularly the way that I operate as a sole practitioner, it didn't really matter where I lived. I spoke with a number of my key clients and they endorsed that view and said it didn't matter to them where I lived. In fact, some were quite jealous."
Rowling's bread and butter is the oil and gas industry, local government, corporate commercial and major events.
Through his work with Auckland Council, he picked up some legal work with the sports promotion and events management company Duco Events, beginning with the rugby league tournament the Auckland Nines.
"There is no tyranny of distance, almost all my work can be done by email and telephone. I've been surprised how little I've had to travel for meetings. In saying that, I have been caught up in quite a large M&A deal that is unfortunately likely to see me up in Auckland quite a bit in the next few months. But that's the exception rather than the rule."
Following the work with the Auckland Nines, Rowling has been involved with the Rugby Tens in Brisbane and Australian fighter Jeff Horn's big-money square off with boxing legend Manny Pacquiao in July 2017. "Because we were the lead promoter on that there was a huge amount of legal work to get through."
He has done the legal work for Auckland heavyweight Joseph Parker's last few fights, including the multi-million bash for three world title belts against British superstar Anthony Joshua in London earlier this year.
It is, in a way, romantic work if you are a sports fan, but nevertheless the basics remain the same and there's plenty of negotiations and to-ing and fro-ing that will test the patience of any lawyer.
"The provision of services agreements, as we call them, between the promoters, are pretty complex beasts, particularly when you consider that they are for an event that is only going to last, perhaps, a few hours. There's massive amounts of money moving, you're looking at host and international broadcaster agreements, sponsorship and host city agreements, venue deals and there will often be side agreements in relation to the boxer and his camp, so there's a whole suite of contracts that have to be put in place and they all have to link together."
He says the guts of the deal are hammered out by promoters before anything comes to him. "It's easy enough to document all those things that have been agreed, it's another thing getting all the details sorted out and making sure that there's still an agreement once you have dealt with all those other issues."
"I really enjoy this work, I am lucky in that the Duco guys are fantastic to deal with, Joe [Parker] is just a lovely guy and very smart, so he knows what matters, and that makes it a lot easier. Sometimes, the people on the other side can be really difficult, with one European promoter being a complete nightmare. I sent at least three default letters to that promoter under our contract just trying to get them to play with a straight bat. But that's not unusual in this game."
Rowling also worked with Duco on Parker's controversial defeat to Britain's Dillian Whyte in July, which was also negotiated with Joshua's promoter, Eddie Hearn, who he describes as "a delight to do business with". Parker lost on points after 12 rounds but a knockdown that gave Whyte one round by two points was seen by many as due to a headclash, and could have swayed the decision.
Given the millions that are generated from the broadcasting rights with pay-per-view television the key breadwinner for the promoters and fighters, it's not surprising that the emphasis is on this.
In his 18 months in the Bay, Rowling did only one local job due to his main focus on oil and gas, and corporate commercial law, and of course sports. Recently he has conducted work for two Hawke's Bay councils and the Big Save group, which has its HQ in Napier. He has been appointed to the board of Sport Hawke's Bay.
■A version of this story first appeared in the September edition of the New Zealand Law Society's magazine, LawTalk.
