Lin Zhaoning took three minutes to sign the separation agreement.
She was the youngest partner candidate at a top law firm. Because she refused to suppress a sexual harassment case for a powerful client, she became a "trade secret thief" and was banned by the entire industry.
There is no way out. She used her remaining savings to rent a 30-square-meter office on the outskirts of the city. The window faced the garbage dump and there was no sign on the door.
Zhou Min was the first to come for the interview. He graduated from law school and has never stopped taking annual examinations for his lawyer license. But there was a gap in her resume for fifteen years - she was a full-time housewife, and her ex-husband said she couldn't even support herself. She got on the phone and said only one thing: "Do you want someone who hasn't taken a case in fifteen years?"
Su Qing is the second one. The youngest lawyer at the legal aid center takes on "small cases from clients that no one cares about" every day, and was warned by the director, "You can't win and you're wasting resources." Lin Zhaoning handed her a business card with a handwritten message on the back: "I want to open a law firm. Are you willing to come?"
Three folding chairs, an old wooden table, and a landline phone that I don't know if it still rings.
From domestic workers who were kicked out but could not receive a penny in compensation, to widows who were forced to pay debts by their partners with forged IOUs after the death of their husbands; from stay-at-home mothers who had been doing housework for fifteen years and were told that "I earned all the money," to young people who were expelled from the workplace because of their gender identity - they took over cases that had been rejected by other law firms, found their way through the laws word by word, and chipped away at the gaps in the evidence inch by inch.
Someone asked them: Why do they specialize in this kind of case?
Because there are too few places that can accommodate these women.
