Mai Chen

Mai Chen is a New Zealand lawyer and government advisor. She was born in Taiwan in 1964, and emigrated with her family to New Zealand in 1970. She graduated from the University of Otago in Dunedin with an LLB (Hons) (First Class) and was admitted to practice in 1986. After teaching as an Assistant Lecturer at the Otago Law Faculty, she completed a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School in 1988, winning the Irving Oberman Memorial Award for the best human rights thesis on the Treaty of Waitangi and indigenous people's rights. She also won a Ferguson Human Rights Scholarship to work as a fellow at the International Labour Office in Geneva on the United Nations Women’s Convention and the ILO Convention on Indigenous Peoples.

In 1989, she took up a lectureship at the Law School at Victoria University of Wellington, and wrote her first book on Women and Discrimination: New Zealand and the United Nations Convention. In 1990, she chaired a tri-departmental Government Review on the Policy of Excluding Women from Combat, and in 1992 she became the youngest Senior Lecturer in Law in New Zealand at that time. In 1993, she co-authored Public Law in New Zealand with Sir Geoffrey Palmer, which was published by Oxford University Press and then left academia to become a Senior Solicitor at a national law firm in 1994, working in the Litigation and Commercial / Corporate Departments specialising in Public Law, and Asia Desk work.

She founded Chen & Palmer as it was then called, Public Law Specialists, with Sir Geoffrey Palmer in 1994. Throughout the first seven years of the firm, she continued to teach constitutional and administrative law post-graduate and under-graduate part-time. She is a member of the AMP Life Limited'’ (NZ) Advisory Board, and was a member of the New Zealand Law Society Legislation Committee for seven years. She has been appointed to the Securities Commission as of 1 September 2003 and to the Board of the Royal New Zealand Ballet as of the last quarter of 2003. She is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Management. She makes a regular weekly appearance on The Breakfast Show on TV One, to commentate on topical issues of public law.

Mai has advised many of the biggest corporate and quasi-public sector organisations in New Zealand including GlaxoSmithKline, the TAB, Ericsson Communications Limited, Sky, Vector, Southern Cross, Citibank, Meridian Energy Limited, Metrowater, the Greenhouse Policy Coalition comprising the biggest emitters in New Zealand who generate 10% of the Gross Domestic Product of this country, along with various universities, polytechnics, crown companies and Government departments. She primarily problem solves and provides strategic advice for General Counsel, Chief Executives, and Chairpersons of Boards.

She has appeared before a range of fora including the Court of Appeal in New Zealand and the Cook Islands, the High Court, the Commerce Commission, the Regulations Review Committee and other select committees, the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the Apple & Pear Export Consents Committee and the Electoral Commission.

Mai advises mainly on Government regulation (and deregulation) of business, on the use of public law tools to generate outcomes, on policy formation and law reform, on strategic advice, on administrative law problems including judicial review, on rights to consultation and on obligations to consult, on constitutional law problems, on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and discrimination law issues, and the Human Rights Act 1993. She specialises in SOE and Crown entity/Crown company issues and in advising on inquiries and reviews.