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After more than 30 years as a lawyer, Rebecca Lim is turning a sharply critical eye back on the profession she knows best, drawing on decades of experience to craft a provocative new novel she bluntly describes as a “piss-take” of life inside law firms.
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.
“When I was an article clerk, that’s what graduates used to be called, you were expected to die in your chair pretty much,” she said.
“What I wanted to skewer with this novel was that whole feeling of if you need to, if you want to make it in a law firm environment, you have to pretty much almost die to do that.”
A central feature of the book, Lim explained, is its use of exaggerated yet recognisable archetypes found in almost every law firm, capturing familiar personalities and the quiet power dynamics that shape how people behave, rise, and survive in the profession.
“But I also wanted to explore the levels of hierarchy. I’ve got archetypes in the novel like the hardest-nails female partner who’s had to claw people’s faces off to get where she’s going,” she said.
“You’ve got sort of really corpulent, overweight, sharp, rainmaker-type dealmaker in the firm who everyone loves and is terrified of and has a million affairs with junior lawyers.”
“I wanted to play with all those things that we see every day in our law firms – who to stay away from, and we know who’s safe to talk to, all that kind of stuff – and layer that into the story so that it makes it seem more realistic.”
By blending crime fiction with a sharp critique of entrenched legal culture, Lim shared that she hopes to pull back the curtain on the strange, often unsettling routines of law firm life, exposing the normalised absurdities that sit beneath its polished surface.
“What I’m trying to do is show all the warts and the kind of environment that we work in every day, and sort of like don’t even realise how sometimes bizarre it is, but also just layer that with a crime scene story at the same time,” she said.
