Thanks to Roll On Friday for this fantastic update
A climate change pressure group has targeted lawyers with a satirical children’s book intended to make them rethink their evil career choices.
Serious People is sending copies of Why Daddy’s Law Firm Works With The Nice Oil Men to “top oil and gas lawyers across London” today, it told RollOnFriday.
ROF’s been treated to a preview copy and can confirm it’s guaranteed to delight every child of a solicitor in the energy sector. Though mums may feel slighted by the insinuation they don’t get instructions from BP as well.
Recipients expecting a valedictory story of a heroic energy lawyer earning the respect of his offspring will be disappointed. As the blurb explains, “On a chilly winter night, a little penguin dared to wonder: if Daddy loves me, why does his law firm facilitate fossil fuel expansion?”
The book depicts a solicitor penguin getting badgered to change his ways by his idealistic brat of a child, who doesn’t appreciate that although their antarctic habitat may get wiped out if dad carries on taking the oily dollar, the family can afford to relocate thanks to his hard work.
ROF prediction: these will become prized collector’s items in energy practices across the land.
A couple of passages stretch credulity, as when the little penguin asks, “Would you help make bombs, or help sell cigars?” and his father claims, “Of course not, that’s taking it too far”.
The solicitor is also depicted with enough free time to put his child to bed (“Good night. Sleep well. Daddy has to get up early to do paperwork for Shell”), imputing an enviable work/life balance which risks tempting lawyers into the oil sector, not encouraging them out of it.
‘You go to an expensive private school in London, my son. Daddy’s tanker leases are nothing compared to what the other parents have done.’
A cheeky book mass-dropped on lawyers represents a change of tactics for climate change campaigners, who previously stormed A&O Shearman’s London office and sprayed fake oil on the windows.
Legal children’s books have featured before, however. During the Covid pandemic, offshore law firm Harneys produced an activity book to pump the next generation of tax exiles full of subliminal advertising, and a few years ago ROF unearthed plans around 1st April for numerous firms to release branded versions of kids’ classics.
Talking to ROF, Serious People campaigner Jamie Inman suggested there was a “sense of tension between equity partners who are making money off oil and gas work and junior solicitors who may be very uncomfortable with the work, sometimes forced to do it against their preferences and certainly not profiting in any way from it”.
“Oil and gas lawyers trade on the ethos and respectability of the wider profession to shirk responsibility for the world they are building”, he said.
Oli Frost, the book’s author, said, “Lawyers sometimes tell fairy tales to justify their fossil fuel work. We’re merely helping by having it illustrated and published”.
It remains to be seen how many lawyers will quit after reading Why Daddy’s Law Firm Works With The Nice Oil Men, but it could certainly wind up a loved one. To that end, ROF has several copies to give away. Simply email news@rollonfriday.com with the heading ‘PINGU’ and your suggested title for a sequel. We’ll send books to the best entries, so don’t forget to include an address.
