Transforming Auckland: Creation of Auckland Council

Mai Chen is a Managing partner of Chen Palmer New Zealand Public and Employment Law Specialists, Australasia’s first public law specialist firm, voted New Zealand’s top public law firm in the New Zealand Law awards in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. Mai is also Adjunct Professor in Commercial and Public Law at the University of Auckland Business School. She has particular expertise in constitutional and administrative law, judicial review, regulatory issues, and public policy and law reform. Mai is a legal trouble-shooter and provides public law advice for leaders in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, and she advises Māori, Pacifica and Asian clients. Mai co-authored Public Law in New Zealand: Cases, Materials, Commentary and Questions published by Oxford University Press in 1993, and has written over 100 articles and contributions to books on public law. She has previously worked at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, and as a senior lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington Law Faculty, has sat on the Securities Commission and numerous private and public entity boards, and has undertaken ministerial reviews of the policy on women in combat and of the Privacy Act 1993. In 2014, she published Transforming Auckland: The Creation of Auckland Council with LexisNexis. Mai was the inaugural chair of NZ Global Women, and is the current chair of NZ Asian Leaders. She was atop 10 finalist in New Zealander of the Year in 2013, and has been in the 50 Top NZ Influencers list of the Listener and Unlimited magazines. Mai also won the Business and Entrepreneur Women of Influence Award in 2013, the Supreme Judges Panel Award and the Professional Excellence Award at the New Zealand Chinese Business Elite Awards in 2012, and Next Magazine's Business Woman of the Year in 2011. Mai has a First Class Law Honours degree from Otago University, and a Master’s degree from Harvard Law School.