Quietly influential in halls of power

Mai Chen says her firm needs a close relationship with politicians to be effective. Picture / Mark Mitchell

She might be considered one of the country's most powerful lobbyists, but Mai Chen, it seems, doesn't really like the word - she sees her public law firm Chen Palmer as a "Washington-style" business that few New Zealanders really understand.

"We're public law problem-solvers," she says.

After this week's appointment of two former Cabinet ministers - one from each of the two major parties - it's safe to say she'll have influence extending considerably further than Parliament's lobby.

Wyatt Creech and Jim Sutton know Parliament's intricacies and many of its personalities so well that they will be a valuable resource for New Zealand's foremost (and arguably only) firm of public law specialists.

"They know a lot of people, I know a lot of people, they work right across the board, I just think the synergies are going to be good," Chen told the Business Herald at the firm's offices on the Terrace in Wellington, a stone's throw from the Beehive.

"When you've had glittering and successful careers as those two have, you have to be extremely selective about what you take on."

Chen's career is no less impressive. The former Otago Girls High dux and head girl gained a first-class law degree from Otago University, where she became a lecturer before going on to a scholarship at Harvard, where she won a prize for her master's thesis. From there, she went to work at the United Nations' International Labour Office in Geneva.

Returning to New Zealand, she became Victoria University's youngest senior law lecturer before leaving for law firm Russell McVeagh.

She left them after a year and mortgaged her house for cash to set up Chen Palmer with former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer in 1994.

Chen said Sutton didn't take any time to make up his mind to join after she ran through a list of what the firm was working on.

"He was excited by the end of it. He said it was the widest range of issues that he's ever had to deal with and that he was really looking forward to it."

The firm works "right across the board in public law problem-solving" including anything to do with Government, legislation and policy.

"The neat thing about public law it's not subject-specific. Government is everywhere so we are everywhere."

Chen has been in the news for her work representing Taito Phillip Field during the recent immigration inquiry. Her work with Vector in the lines company's dispute with the Commerce Commission is probably more indicative of the type of work the firm specialises in. It is hard to be certain.

"Maybe up to 20 per cent of our clients are known because we're not able to fix things quietly and we end up in the public arena or with them being investigated ... But most of our work you don't get to hear of, because if we're successful we fix the problem before it surfaces."

She says the firm's transtasman private-sector client base makes up the bulk of its business. It has worked for most major local companies and has an increasing list of Australian clients.

Work of late includes issues around the Commerce Act and competition law involving the commerce, electricity and telecommunications sectors. As a member of the Securities Commission, Chen gets to see policy from both sides.

In fact, regulation is a particularly busy area for the firm at the moment.

"Regulation is cyclical, you go through deregulation and you go through reregulation and there's been some revisionism as of late.

"We went through a previous period where we had light-handed regulation and we seem to be moving towards a period of more heavy-handed regulation and that's a trend that seems to be being endorsed by the electorate.

"Labour has done some regulatory things which would be considered to be fairly muscular, but to be honest, they've also been fairly popular.

"When I say the electorate, of course, that isn't necessarily the business community, I'm talking about the masses here. The difficulty always for the business community is that, in terms of numbers, they are not necessarily who swings the election."

Although the increasing frequency with which issues have blown up recently suggests otherwise, Chen believes regulation is actually "pretty simple".

"It's really about two things. One is making sure that there's a proper balance between protection of the consumer on one hand vis a vis a proper rate of return for investors. The second thing is to ensure that those who make the regulations really understand the industry that they're regulating, otherwise you get unintended downstream effects, which really annoys industry."

However, she believes the regulatory pendulum will swing back towards a more light-handed regime.

"I'm sure that National's now working up a big head of steam just as Labour did after nine years in the wilderness. By the time we get to 2008, I don't doubt that National will have a list as long as your arm of things that they want to change."

While the Government and its approach to regulation may change in the next election, the system under which it operates won't.

With Sutton, Creech and Finance Minister Michael Cullen's former press secretary Patricia Herbert, Chen Palmer has a roster of consultants with a formidable knowledge of Parliament's machinations.

Furthermore, Chen says the nature of MMP governments means the firm must have a more intimate relationship with politicians to be effective.

In fact it was the pending arrival of MMP that provided the impetus for Chen and Sir Geoffrey to found their firm in 1994.

"There is no doubt that MMP has made what happens across the road [at Parliament] a lot more complicated."

Under first past the post, senior ministers would make the decisions, which would in short order be endorsed by Cabinet, caucus and then Parliament.

"But now of course you have minority MMP governments and so it really requires quite detailed tracking to figure what's going on from sitting day to sitting day.

"At all times we have to check the condition of the patient, the condition of Parliament, the condition of the legislative agenda, the condition of where the votes are at. Even now, the House is fairly much on a knife edge depending on what happens with respect to various inquiries - which of course I can't talk about. I have to say it's one of the challenges of my job. It's just never boring here."

Since the firm was established 12 years ago, "most of the key public law issues in New Zealand have had some input from us, whether that is known or not, so it's very exciting to be a part of this firm".

Although Chen Palmer is the only specialist public law firm, bigger companies have public law units.

"If we don't generate good outcomes people will go somewhere else."

Right now Chen is "flooded with work", so much so that it leaves little room in her life for anything other than husband John and three-year-old son Jack.

She and her family occasionally grab time at their house in Nelson's Port Hills or take a short overseas trip, but she has had to give up most of the directorships she has held, with the exception of the Securities Commission and the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

Chen said she can't think of any other career she would choose.

"The most important thing that makes us different is that we don't focus on giving people legal opinions, we focus on fixing problems. We are about generating outcomes."

Unlike most other firms that tend to act as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff after policy is made, put into law and applied, "we've always fed upstream. We've always said the best way to generate a good outcome is to start early. If you know there's going to be policy reform, get in early, have influence, do the analysis."

She says the first 50 per cent of what the firm does is law and legal analysis like any other firm.

"But really we have to be 'lawyers plus', in the sense that once we've done the legal analysis, we then say, 'Well, all right, what do we do with it?'

"Jim and Wyatt aren't lawyers, but I have plenty of lawyers here and what I don't need from them is a legal opinion. What I do need though is real-life experience of how to fix problems at the Government interface and they have heaps of that."

Mai Chen

Age: 42.

Status: Arrived in New Zealand from Taiwan in 1970.

Married: To John Sinclair, one son.

Education Otago Girls: Dux, head girl.

Otago University: Law degree.

Harvard: Masters Career Law lecturer, Otago University, Victoria University.

Formed Chen Palmer with Sir Geoffrey Palmer in 1994.