Meaning of the sentence, "she is the kind of lawyer most skilled at finding reasons not to do things"

Elsewhere in the WikiLeaks cable that you link to, the author of the cable includes this paragraph about Tsai Ing-wen:

Tsai was one of the few cabinet members who won the respect of members of the Legislative Yuan (LY) during her tenure as MAC Chair. She was tough but expressed herself clearly and persuasively in defending the administration's cross-Strait policies. This approach extended to her boss, President Chen, as well. In a press interview one month after his inauguration in 2000, President Chen said that the new government might accept the 1992 consensus of "one China with different interpretations." The next day, the newly appointed Tsai denied the possibility commenting that there had never been any consensus. Despite this incident, Chen kept her on as MAC Chair until the end of his first term. She is likely to be a strong supporter and effective advocate of the President's policies constraining cross-Strait relations and other issues.

The incident described amounts to a signal by the newly inaugurated President Chen of willingness to compromise on Taiwan's status vis-a-vis mainland China, followed by extreme resistance to that overture (grounded in a rejection of the supposed "consensus" underlying the overture) by Ms. Tsai.

If we think of opposition to any accommodation of the mainland Chinese position on "two Chinas" versus "one China with different interpretations" versus whatever other schemes are on the table as evidence of a commitment to "constraining cross-Strait relations," it follows that Ms. Tsai is a strong voice against compromise in negotiations with mainland China.

It is in a spirit consistent with this appraisal of Ms. Tsai that the sentence

She is the kind of lawyer most skilled at finding reasons not to do things.

appears. Because she opposes changing the status quo regarding the administration's cross-Strait policies, she is in the position of producing arguments in support of not changing the policy—or in other words, "finding reasons not to do things." And this task, the cable says, she does very well.

Here are three statements from the excerpt:

• As Vice Premier, we expect her to be consistently well informed on issues and very clear about the policy positions that the Chen Administration will stake out.

• She is the kind of lawyer most skilled at finding reasons not to do things.

• As the person who started Taiwan's push for a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., we can expect that she will continue this effort and push even harder in light of the July 2007 expiration of trade negotiating authority.

The first says that she is expected to be familiar with how the Chen Administration thinks. The third says that she is expected to work hard towards the stated goal.

If we are to read the middle statements consistently with the others, one reading is that she is skilled at finding the reasons that the reluctant parties might cite to try to hinder her efforts. In other words, the sentence in question can be read as saying that she excels at anticipating the objections to her proposals.

There are two types of lawyers: (1) the type who tells you why you can't do what you want to do; (2) the type who tells you how you can do what you want to do. The first sees all the problems but no solutions. The second sees how to get around the problems and implement the solutions.

She is the kind of lawyer most skilled at finding reasons not to do things. As the person who started Taiwan's push for a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., we can expect that she will continue this effort and push even harder in light of the July 2007 expiration of trade negotiating authority.

When I read the quote above, the first sentence describes a different person than the second sentence. The first sentence describes lawyer type 1; the second sentence describes lawyer type 2. The preceding sentences also describe an energetic, can-do person.

I vote to ignore the sentence in question. I'd blame the translation, but the OP doesn't think it is translated from the Chinese. It is a sentence at total variance with the rest of the quote, and somehow it slipped by. It happens.