Jenni McManus
Fellow legal practitioners have taken to social media this weekend to mourn the loss of high-profile employment advocate Ashleigh Fechney (Streb) who died on New Year’s Day while holidaying with her husband Andy in Lithuania.
Known among employment lawyers as Ashleigh the Advocate, Fechney is believed to have suffered a medical complication arising from an illness. She and her husband had been planning to adopt children from Lithuania.
On behalf of ELINZ – the Employment Lawyers’ Institute of New Zealand – Jamie Rose-Peacock posted on LinkedIn: “This is devastating news. Ashleigh was only 32 and in the past five years she made an extraordinary contribution to our profession and to those she advocated for. She had so much ahead of her.”
Others posted that the legal profession had lost a true visionary – a fierce, principled and tireless representative and a mentor.
“She helped people without reservation, without ego and without keeping score,” one said. “If someone needed a hand, Ashleigh showed up – fully, bravely and with unwavering integrity.”
Three months ago, Ashleigh sat down for an interview with LawNews to discuss how she navigated the legal world with ADHD and autism and how law firms could make meaningful changes to support neurodivergent talent.
The piece, written by LawNews Lifestyle editor Georgina Bond, was one of our website’s most popular reads this year.
You can read it here.
Read also this story, in which Ashleigh highlighted funding issues related to legal aid work. and this one, with her views on regulating employment advocates.
Friends have set up a Givealittle page to help the family with the significant and unexpected costs involved.