A Field-by-Field Guide to Company Extracts The Search Before the Handshake Before a law firm does anything for a client involving a company or trust structure, it pulls the ASIC search. An ASIC Organisation Extract is a snapshot of everything the public register knows about a company at the moment the search is run. It …
A Due Diligence Primer for Clients and Practitioners What Is a Company? A company is a legal fiction. The law says: we will treat this thing as though it were a person. It can own land, sue and be sued, enter contracts and owe money. Not All Companies Are the Same The type of company …
A Plain-English Guide to Company and Trust Structures Read More »
The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 (NSW) passed Parliament on 12 February 2026, making New South Wales the first Australian jurisdiction to impose specific work health and safety duties in relation to digital work systems. Background The reforms respond to recommendations from the 2022 NSW Legislative Council Select Committee on the Future …
NSW regulates AI and digital work systems under WHS laws Read More »
A recent Federal Court decision has set aside a visa cancellation character test ruling because the Tribunal failed to engage with handwritten letters from three children. A reminder that decision-makers cannot treat children’s voices as mere character references. The Case at a Glance In Sumeo v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2026] FCA …
Visa Cancellation & the Character Test: How Children’s Evidence Can Change the Outcome Read More »
By the time most families notice financial abuse of elderly parents, it has been going on for months. Money is gone. Documents have been signed. The person responsible has positioned themselves as indispensable, and your parent may not even see a problem. Financial abuse of older people rarely begins with theft. It begins with help. …
Financial Abuse of Elderly Parents: How to Recognise It and What to Do Read More »
Background The 2026-27 Federal Budget was delivered on 12 May 2026. It introduced three reforms affecting trust properties. These apply to both testamentary and discretionary trusts. The reforms cover abolition of the 50% CGT discount, restrictions on negative gearing, and a 30% minimum tax on discretionary trust income. Each reform has a different commencement date. …
2026-27 Federal Budget Trust Properties: What You Need to Know Read More »
Every litigator who briefs experts has had the experience of opening a draft report and feeling a quiet drop in the stomach. The opinion is fine but the reasoning is gone. Or the assumptions are wrong. Or the witness has wandered into a paragraph that no person in their field could give. Thankfully, there is …
Briefing the expert: what the judges actually say Read More »
Michael Meek J was appointed to the Supreme Court of New South Wales in late 2022 after more than two decades at the equity bar. 138 published judgments since. No decision overturned on appeal. Several already cited as authority by the Court of Appeal. “When you’d buy vinyl, you’d have this lovely-sized object with a …
A $3 billion company is being forced to rebrand in its home market after years of trademark infringement, and the honest concurrent use defence it relied upon has been decisively rejected by the High Court. This decision isn’t just a corporate cautionary tale; it’s a warning to any business that has ever assumed a name …
There is an old joke among insolvency lawyers that the only people who profit from a winding up are the liquidators. The recent decision of Brereton J in Segal v Sharma; In the matter of South West Radiology Pty Ltd (No 3) [2026] NSWSC 543, handed down on 18 May 2026, does little to dispel …
Trust Me, You Don’t Want Your Trustee Going Broke: Set-Off and the Mutuality Trap Read More »