Top legal help for mayor Ken

Another lawyer has come to the fore in the shake-up following the election of Ken Livingstone as London mayor.Solicitor Judith Mayhew, special adviser to the chairman of Clifford Chance, last week added another string to her bow when she became the mayor's financial and business adviser.Ms Mayhew described her role as a 'channel of communication' between Mr Livingstone and the City of London's business and financial sectors.

'I will represent to the mayor what the finance and business community want and test his policies in those sectors,' she told the Gazette last week.As chairwoman of the Corporation of London's policy and resources committee since 1996, effectively the City's political leader, Ms Mayhew is well placed to take up the role.

'I am lucky to have had a lot of time and experience promoting the City and in lobbying the government and Europe on issues which effect the City,' she explained.Although there was talk that Ms Mayhew might consider standing for mayor herself, she says she had enough to do with her role at the Corporation.A native New Zealander, Ms Mayhew puts some of her success down to her 'immigrant' status.

'We are not inhibited by history or class and so achieve things that others cannot,' she says.She first came to the UK in 1973 to lecture at Southampton University and then King's College, London.

In 1989, she moved into private practice at Titmuss Sainer Dechert and Wilde Sapte before taking up her existing role at Clifford Chance.'I see myself as a politician and a lawyer,' she says.

'My legal training helps me to speed-read, analyse while reading and marshal an argument; that is what lawyers do, and so do politicians.'Alongside the business and financial needs of the City, transport and economic regeneration in the City will also be key issues, she says.'London is the richest city in the world with 13 of the poorest districts in the UK, which is socially and politically unacceptable.

We hope to change that.'

Sue Allen