Lawyers Weekly
Speaking on a recent episode of The Protégé Podcast, Rebecca Lim, the head of legal, financial services regulatory at Judo Bank and an award-winning author, offered a searing critique of the legal profession, using her new novel to expose what she describes as the darker undercurrents of BigLaw and its entrenched workplace culture.
In describing her new book, Lim shared how it’s a “piss-take” of the Australian legal industry, deliberately grounded in the realities lawyers recognise, but used to surface the more uncomfortable social and institutional issues that sit beneath the profession.
“My new book is a piss-take of the Australian legal industry, of colonialism, particularly how female graduates feel when they sort of enter that kind of really high-pressure environment, but also of pedophiles,” she said.
She also revealed the book draws inspiration from an unresolved historical crime, with its lingering lack of closure forming part of a broader effort to channel her anger at the fact that some perpetrators remain unaccountable and beyond the reach of justice for decades.
“It’s not really widely known, but this book was sparked off by the Mr Cruel series of crimes, which haven’t actually been solved yet, and it’s been over probably 30-plus years now, and that pedophile is still out there, still unaccounted for,” she said.
“So lots of really disparate things went into this, but it’s really just channelling my rage and fury, I guess, at how some members of society can get away with crimes against women and children.”
At the heart of the novel is a sharp, unflinching dissection of law firm culture, which Lim said is drawn from her own early experiences in the profession, where there was an unspoken expectation to work to the bone and push through at almost any cost.
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