The Law and Culture Conference is an annual event. Law and Culture conferences began with the aim of increasing the understanding of Pacific legal issues and to strengthen relationships between Pacific legal scholars. In 2008 Otago University secured funding from the Pacific Cooperation Foundation to fund an exchange between staff and students of the Otago University Faculty of Law and the University of the South Pacific School of Law. Aims of this exchange included to aims to increase the understanding of Pacific legal issues and to strengthen relationships between the two institutions. In 2008 Otago visited USP. As part of this exchange a small conference was hosted. The papers were published in volume 12(1) of the Journal of South Pacific Law. In 2009 a group from USP visited Otago. Again a conference was part of this exchange. Papers were published in volume 13(1) of the Journal of South Pacific Law.

The success of these conferences led the conference organisers to broaden the scope of the conference and in 2010 the Otago/USP student exchange conferences developed into the Law and Culture Conference. Themes of past conferences have been:

2010: Meaningful Legal Pluralism in the Pacific and Beyond (hosted by USP School of Law, Emalus Campus)

2011: The present is the living past (hosted by USP School of Law, Emalus Campus)

2012: Pacific law and NZ/Aotearoa (hosted by Auckland University School of Law)

Papers, powerpoints and programmes from previous conferences can be found on the website under the archive of papers.