Ashurst and Perkins Coie partners voted overwhelmingly to merge, stitching together a 3,000-lawyer, $2.8bn firm with hubs in Sydney, London, New York and Seattle. Ashurst finally gets the US footprint it's been chasing, while Perkins Coie gets the global platform. Expected to close Q3 2026, it's the latest transatlantic mega-merger following A&O Shearman and HSF Kramer: Point Blank

⚖️ AI: What are the agency implications of agentic AI? As agentic AI moves from novelty to mainstream, Aussie organisations are carrying legal exposure they may not have mapped. Agentic systems can autonomously enter transactions, interact with third parties and make decisions at scale, all without a human in the loop. The problem is, common law agency assumes the agent is a legal person acting within a defined scope of authority. Agentic AI has neither, yet third parties can still reasonably assume authority exists. That creates real risk across contract, negligence, misleading conduct and privacy law, all without a human making the call. Air Canada learned this the hard way when a tribunal held it liable for its chatbot’s incorrect fare representations: Thomson Geer

⚖️ Takeovers: The Takeovers Panel has handed down final orders in Humm Group — a timely reminder that ASX announcements need to reflect boardroom reality. The Panel found Humm's December 2025 announcement, stating the board was "carefully evaluating" and "willing to engage" with Credit Corp's $0.77 indicative proposal, was misleading. The then-Chair had already rejected the deal weeks earlier. The Panel ordered: (1) corrective disclosure by the independent board committee, (2) divestment of 15 million shares held by the Chair's associated entity (vested in the Commonwealth for ASIC to sell), (3) a temporary block on the creep exception for TAG and its associates, and (4) a requirement that ASIC accept any unsold divested shares into a Credit Corp bid if it secures acceptances from the holders of 47.1% of Humm shares.

⚖️ Employment: The Fair Work Commission has provisionally decided to phase out junior pay rates for employees aged 18 and over. It’s starting with the General Retail, Fast Food and Pharmacy Awards, with other awards expected to follow. From Dec 2026, affected employees will receive a five percentage point increase every six months until they reach the full adult rate, but only after they've clocked six months with the same employer. That service requirement creates two awkward dynamics: junior employees who change jobs reset the clock and take a pay cut, and employers gain a financial incentive to cut staff loose before the six-month mark. Retail, fast food and pharma employers, it’s time to audit your payroll systems and rates: HSF Kramer

Sam Altman reckons the upside of AI should be a four-day work week. OpenAI is pushing governments to incentivise a 32-hour standard and employers to share the productivity gains with workers rather than just pocket them. To fund it all, OpenAI is floating higher company taxes and a new tax on "automated labour". Locally, a CSIRO study found AI-adopting firms posted 36% more job ads than their peers. Though economists warn that this hiring binge may just be the first half of a hire-and-fire cycle, with cuts likely to follow as Aus catches up to the US: AFR

Trump's $14.6bn defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch got tossed, after a federal judge found he hadn't plausibly pleaded actual malice. The suit centred on a WSJ article claiming Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a birthday letter, complete with a naked woman sketch signed across the torso. Trump's team says it's refiling, so this one's far from over: Capital Brief

🥇 HSF Kramer swept both the Mergermarket value and deal count tables in Australasia for 1Q26, posting $36.5bn across 25 deals. Allens was a major mover, rocketing from 8th to 2nd, up 575%. Last year's champ Mallesons slipped to 4th, down 24.4%. Corrs had a rough ride, tumbling from 3rd to 13th by value, down 74.8% year-on-year: Point Blank

🧬 Soul Patts and Genesis Capital are back at the table for Monash IVF, lifting their offer to 90¢ a share ($350m) after the fertility group knocked back an 80¢ approach in November. Monash has engaged Macquarie Capital and Clayton Utz to assess the revised bid. The consortium wants four weeks' exclusivity and a unanimous board recommendation, with the offer expiring 21 April: AFR