Joyman Lee is a comparative private lawyer and a legal historian. In private law, his interests centre on trusts, property and succession. As a legal historian, he is primarily interested in how non-European systems of law impact upon contemporary property systems.

His jurisdictions of interest include Japan and Taiwan for his doctrinal work, and Francophone Africa—Senegal in particular—in legal history. He is interested in how land provides a space in which non-European legal ideas maintain or reassert their autonomy in face of the hegemonic presence of state law across the divide of settler colonialism.

Joyman received his graduate training in both law (in England) and history (in the United States). Raised in London, he taught at the University of Glasgow before joining UNSW.