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The New Zealand Law Society will ask all applicants for a practising certificate to state their ethnicity.
North Island vice president Tiana Epati says New Zealand's challenging cultural mix and issues such as access to justice means it is important to gain an accurate picture of lawyer ethnicity.
Ut to now it has been an option to give the information, and 44 percent of the country's 12,800 lawyers have not done so.
At the 2013 Census 88 percent of lawyers described themselves as European, 7 percent as Asian, 6 percent as Maori and 2 percent Pacific.
That's in contrast to the overall Census finding that 77 percent of all New Zealanders identified as European, 11 percent as Maori, 11 percent as Asian and 5 percent as Pacific Peoples.
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