Big Sis Briefing: The Inconvenient Open Secret (aka How Law Protects Its Predators)

Content Warning: This piece discusses workplace sexual harassment and predatory behavior in detail. If you’re experiencing harassment or assault, please reach out to appropriate support services. I’m not a counselor or trained support person - I’m a former lawyer sharing commentary on systemic issues to impact change.

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I woke up this morning to a DM that made my blood run cold.

“Funny you posted this because I was literally only thinking this morning how inappropriate [name] from [institution] was and how I can’t believe that person is still employed there”.

They were responding to my Instagram story about a different predator entirely. A law firm partner with such a well-known reputation for inappropriate behavior toward young women that senior associates know not to leave them alone with law student clerks at recruitment events.

The kind of open secret where everyone does the knowing look, the careful choreography of keeping vulnerable people out of harm’s way, the whispered warnings passed down like an underground railroad of professional survival tips.

Here’s the kicker: this person knew about someone else. A different predator. Who left law (or was “encouraged” to leave, let’s be honest) and landed themselves a nice academic position at a Queensland university. Teaching law students. The institution “apparently” knows about their history.

Do they just trust them now? Or is there some priorwarning like “don’t touch the students” given?

Another message came through: “Literally fired for harassing young women then goes to a place full of young women”.

Then this absolute gut punch: “I’m pretty sure they don’t wanna lose their connection to potential victims.”

I wanted to vomit.

The Economics of Perpetrator Protection

Let’s talk about what it takes for a law firm to actually do something about a predator. Because it’s not purely on values. It’s not purely on ethics. It’s certainly not care for the humans whose careers and mental health get destroyed.

It’s pure arithmetic.

Someone once told me about a partner whose retirement payment was “heavily penalised” to the tune of about half a million dollars because of their behaviour. That’s the price tag on serial harassment, apparently. The accumulated cost of settlements and payouts and HR hours and the reputational risk finally added up to more than their rainmaking was worth.

That kind of penalty means there were enough incidents, enough complaints, enough settlements that the collective partnership finally did the math and decided they were a liability. How many people had to be paid off before the ledger tipped? How many NDAs were signed? How many people left law entirely because staying meant seeing them in the office every day while everyone pretended nothing happened?

The Christian Porter saga and the broader legal industry reckoning a few years ago gave us a glimpse of just how deep this rot goes. So many of us were not surprised in the slightest. “Yeah, checks out” was the retort that I heard most, followed by a sad shrug.

I interviewed Fiona Thatcher on my podcast about her experience, which felt like it carried its own risk at the time. We talked about the fundamental conflict of HR departments employed by the same partnerships that protect revenue-generating predators. How do you police the people who sign your paycheck?

Ooft.

One Australian state is banning NDAs in workplace harassment settlements. This is massive though remains to be challenged. Because the economics of predator protection rely on being able to bury each incident individually, to ensure no pattern ever became visible and to make sure the cost of each settlement could be absorbed quietly into the overhead.

What happens when you can’t bury them anymore?

The Underground Railroad

There’s a whole shadow infrastructure in the legal profession dedicated to keeping young lawyers safe. Senior Associates who know which partners you don’t get in the lift alone with. Graduate coordinators who carefully manage which supervisors certain clerks are assigned to. Women lawyers who pull younger colleagues aside at drinks events and say casually, “Maybe don’t go to the after-party if they’re going”.

This emotional labor of keeping each other safe is absolutely exhausting and completely f*cked up.

We’ve built an entire early-warning system because the formal systems won’t act. We pass information between generations like it’s professional development. “Here’s how to draft a contract, here’s how to avoid getting harassed by a senior partner” - just standard onboarding content, apparently.

When Law Firms Export Their Problems

But what happens when a law firm finally decides someone is too much of a liability? Sometimes they get the golden parachute and the penalised retirement.

Sometimes they just… move.

To boutique firms where the culture is looser and the HR is lighter. To in-house roles where maybe nobody checks too carefully. To academia, where suddenly they have power over people’s grades and references and career prospects, where students have even less recourse than junior lawyers did.

The receiving institution might actually even know. They might investigate. They might have their own “wink wink” conversation about appropriate boundaries. They might think “well, we’ve warned them, so if anything happens, we did our due diligence”.

That’s not protecting students. That’s protecting the institution from liability while rolling the dice on whether this time will be different. You know what it reminds me of? When you know a dog has bitten before and you trust it near a baby anyway because, well, you warned the dog not to bite again.

You can’t be serious.

The Bind

Here’s where I’m stuck. People trust me with their stories. They name names in my DMs. They share experiences that still make them shake years later. They tell me about the predators who are still practicing, still teaching and still in positions of power over the next generation.

I hold these secrets and I feel the weight of them. Because speaking up means potential defamation claims (ironic, right?). It means professional consequences. It means becoming a target myself. We’ve all seen how that movie plays out.

But staying quiet means more people walk into situations they should have been warned about. More law students pick universities without knowing who’s teaching there. More graduates accept clerkships at firms where they’ll spend years learning to keep themselves safe from their own colleagues.

The legal profession had something like a mini “Me Too” reckoning. We expressed the right amount of concern. Some firms updated their policies. Everyone agreed this was terrible and shouldn’t happen.

Yet here we are, the stories keep coming. The underground railroad keeps operating. The predators keep finding new positions of power.

What Actually Changes This?

The male champions of change who actually stop inappropriate jokes in rooms where there are no women present. Who have things to lose professionally and say something anyway. Our next gen leaders and millennial colleagues who are uncomfortable with the behavior they see in the spaces they’re finally being allowed to enter and are willing to call it out. Legends.

The senior lawyers who pull young people aside and name what’s happening and validate that yes, that was inappropriate, and no, you’re not being too sensitive.

If you’re in a position of power and you know about a predator in your organisation, your silence is complicity.

Every time you do the careful choreography of keeping vulnerable people away from them instead of removing them, you’re choosing institutional convenience over human safety.

If you’re making partnership decisions and you know someone has a history, the cost-benefit analysis shouldn’t be “how much is this costing us in settlements?” It should be “how can we justify keeping someone who makes our workplace unsafe?”.

If you’re an academic institution hiring someone from practice, maybe check why they left. Maybe do more than a “wink wink” conversation about boundaries. Maybe consider that your students deserve better than being the testing ground for whether a known predator can behave themselves this time.

The Uncomfortable Question

I wonder sometimes if there’s a way to create something like Glassdoor but for this specific problem. A place where patterns become visible. Where the whisper network becomes a searchable database. Where law students and graduates could make informed decisions about where to work or study.

I don’t know what that looks like without massive legal risk. I don’t know how to build it in a way that protects victim survivors while making perpetrators accountable.

But I know the current system still isn’t working.

People should be able to choose their law school based on the quality of education, not whether they want to risk being taught by someone with a documented history of harassing students. They should be able to accept clerkships without needing to know which partners to avoid. They should be able to go to work without an elaborate safety protocol passed down from the generation before them.

If You’re In This Situation Right Now

I need to be clear: I’m not equipped or trained to support you if you’re currently experiencing harassment or assault. I’m a commercial lawyer with loud opinions about systemic problems. I can’t provide legal advice, counseling or crisis support.

What I can tell you is that you’re not imagining it, you’re not too sensitive and it’s not your fault. The underground network of people warning each other exists because the formal systems have failed.

That’s not on you.

If you’re experiencing harassment or considering making a complaint, please reach out to people who are actually trained to help. Community legal centers can advise on your workplace rights. Your firm’s EAP might provide confidential counseling (though I understand the complications of using a service paid for by your employer). The support services listed at the top of this piece are staffed by people who know what they’re doing.

If you’re holding onto a story because you’re not sure what to do with it, that’s okay too. You don’t owe anyone your trauma. You don’t have to be the one to fix this system. Sometimes survival is enough.

The Bottom Line

Until institutions actually protect people instead of predators, we keep having these conversations. We keep sharing warnings in DMs. We keep holding secrets that shouldn’t have to be secrets.

Predators keep teaching, keep practicing, keep holding power over the next generation of vulnerable people who don’t know what everyone else knows… yet.

If you’re aware of these patterns in your organisation and you haven’t acted, what are you waiting for? Another settlement? Another complaint? Another person who decides law isn’t worth this sh*t and quits?

The emotional labour of keeping each other safe while pretending everything is fine is exhausting.

It’s time for the people with actual power to do something about it.

💖

Mel

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This piece represents commentary on systemic issues in the legal profession based on patterns observed over 15+ years in law. If you need specific legal advice about workplace harassment, please consult a lawyer. If you need mental health support, please reach out to qualified professionals.