Ms Chen, a former dux of Otago Girls' High School and University of Otago graduate, was back at the Otago University Law Faculty yesterday to speak at a second-year public law class and give a public lecture.
She is a founding partner of Wellington law firm Chen Palmer, and an adjunct professor in commercial and public law at the Auckland University Business School.
Sometimes lawyers encountered angry clients who were "very unhappy" and determined to take legal action, she said in an interview.
The first step was to "take the matches off the client" and encourage the person to calm down and carefully think through the options.
Litigation was unavoidable in some cases, but legal action was often slow, costly, could have unintended results, and often badly damaged business and personal relationships.
"A good lawyer has their ego well under control," she added.
Lawyers were required to act in "the best interests of their client" and that meant calmly clarifying the key elements of the client's concern and trying to resolve matters as quickly and cheaply as possible, often with a phone call seeking a low-key resolution with the other affected party.
Lawyers should try to "get the relationship back" if possible, to "sort the problem out" and then to "get out" with the least legal intervention.
Ms Chen is the author of Public Law Toolbox, which outlines ways to resolve problems with Government and advising people how to use existing public law tools, such as the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Privacy Commissioner, to help resolve problems.
The ombudsmen could often resolve issues much more quickly and effectively than could be done through taking court action, and offered genuine redress for concerned people who were often relatively weak, vulnerable and inarticulate.
The Office of the Ombudsmen needed to be properly resourced to carry out its important functions, and she noted that extra resources had recently been provided to counter an earlier "crisis" with mounting workload.
