ASIC’s top lawyer’s love of LA Law launched a brilliant career

A barrister with a thick Scottish brogue who became a lawyer after falling in love with the television drama LA Law is leading one of the corporate watchdog’s biggest cases of the past decade.

ASIC legal counsel Ruth Higgins, SC.

A brilliant barrister with a thick Scottish brogue who became a lawyer after falling in love with the television drama LA Law is leading one of the corporate watchdog’s biggest cases of the past decade.

Ruth Higgins SC, who is taking on the challenge of proving former Star executives and board failed to stop money laundering and criminal associations at the company’s casinos, is the daughter of a Scottish judge who spent a prodigious childhood buying philosophy books with her own pocket money and emigrated to Australia for love.

“My dad was a solicitor and later a judge, but it would be disingenuous to say that that’s why I ended up being a lawyer,” Dr Higgins said in an address to Monash University law students. “I was seduced by LA Law, which was a 1980s California law drama, where the men and women had very, very large shoulder pads and bigger hair.

“And it was the romance and glamour of that that made me think that storming around saying I object would be a fine way to spend a life.”

Dr Higgins said the interest sparked by the television legal drama did not in any way deprecate the influence her father had on her.

“He had been a genuinely working-class boy in the suburbs of Glasgow who ended up sitting as a judge,” she said. “The trajectory of his life was in many ways much, much more remarkable than mine because he achieved a great deal of movement and then facilitated movement in my life. So inspired partly by my dad and mostly by LA Law, I went to Glasgow University to study law.”

Early career

After winning the university medal for being the most distinguished graduate in law, she went on to study philosophy at Oxford where she picked up three prestigious scholarships.

“I always really loved philosophy as a wee girl and the first book I bought with my own pocket money was Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, which I don’t recommend anyone read before the age of 13,” she said.

Initially planning to go to the Bar in London, Dr Higgins said a chance encounter sent her to Australia. “A very good friend of mine at Oxford came up to me one day and said, ‘I think I know the woman with whom you’re going to spend the rest of your life,’” she recalled. “And I said, ‘who is she?’ And he said, ‘she’s my best friend’.”

Dr Higgins said she eventually flew to Australia on a “blind date” to meet the woman who became her long-term partner.

“The notion that I would fly to Australia ever or that I’d base myself in Australia ever was ridiculous because it involved an actual day on an aeroplane,” she said. “As soon as I was in Australia, I was very happy to live here.”

After a stint as a solicitor with Gilbert + Tobin, Dr Higgins was admitted to the Bar in 2006 where she was quickly spotted as one of the most promising young barristers in the country.

Rise to the top

One colleague described her as one “of the most gifted juniors I have worked with in the course of my 30-year career as a litigation lawyer and partner. In my view she is already regarded as one of the leading lights of the junior bar in Sydney.”

In 2010, Dr Higgins beat a quartet of other young Melbourne barristers to take out the Sheahan Lock Partners Junior Barrister Award.

Now president of the NSW Bar Association, a member of the Takeovers Panel, and a director of the Australian Bar Association, she is considered one of the country’s leading silks in commercial and competition law.

The Star casino and event centre in Sydney.

Last year, she was lead counsel for ANZ arguing successfully for the $4.9bn acquisition of Suncorp Bank against the objections of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Dr Higgins is now appearing on the side of the regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, in the Federal Court. In her opening submissions last week, she said the ASIC case was “not about the risk involved when a player bets black instead of red in roulette or twists instead of sticking in blackjack, it is a case about unacceptable legal, regulatory, financial and reputational risks.”

On another occasion, she described suspicious packages of money arriving at a private salon run by the Suncity junket at Star Sydney as “red flags and red suitcases”.

Dr Higgins is appearing before Federal Court judge Michael Lee, a man capable of turning out his own memorable turn of phrase. Justice Lee gained some notoriety in the Bruce Lehrmann rape case in 2024 saying “having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat”.

Justice Lee has already lightheartedly referred to Dr Higgins’ accent, noting that “now that I have a daughter in Glasgow, I’m getting used to the Glaswegian accent, but could you speak up just a bit louder?” Dr Higgins replied: “Of course, your Honour. I’ll try and go more slowly as well.”

The trial continues.

Originally published as ASIC’s top lawyer’s love of LA Law launched a brilliant career