“SASSY SOLICITOR Helene has spent the last few years getting what she wants and who she wants. Rising through the ranks of a high profile Dublin Law Firm, she has professional as well as sexual recognition.
“Her story is set against the last groans of the Celtic Tiger. She works among, has relationships with, and represents the movers and shakers who created it. Privy to the machinations of the top legal firm, Helene goes on a voyage of self discovery of both her own motivations and those of her profession. We learn how she rationalises the two, and whether they can ever be reconciled . . .
“This is a no holes [sic] barred insider and explosive view of the Dublin legal scene. On this voyage of discovery with Helene, we learn not only a bit more about choices we all make, but also how a life can compound or confront these mistakes.”
Thus reads the blurb on the back of a recent self-published book, Negligent Behaviour, by Dublin solicitor Josepha Madigan. For 11 years she has been a family law partner in Madigans, a solicitors firm founded by her father and now taken over by her and her brother. She is also a mediator and collaborative law practitioner. While she told The Irish Timesshe had no direct experience of malpractices described in the book, she said she was upset at what she saw around her in the legal world.
This came to a head when she was on spiritual retreat in France in 2008. She came back from France and the book “wrote itself”, she said. “There is a moral in the story. There are consequences for our actions.”
Although initially an Irish publisher was interested in the novel, this did not work out, so she decided to publish the book herself. It is on sale at amazon.com.