Baker McKenzie is set to cut less than 10% of its staff globally after a firmwide review, putting up to ~740 roles at risk. The firm says the move is about rethinking operations amid AI adoption and efficiency pushes. The cuts follow a similar move by Clifford Chance, which flagged a ~10% reduction in London business services late last year: Law.com

⚖️ AI/Evidence: AI-generated meeting notes are creeping into investigations and disputes as quasi-verbatim records of what was said. That cuts both ways. Courts and regulators may treat these records as probative evidence, even where they misattribute comments, miss nuance, or strip out tone and context. The risk spikes in sensitive meetings. The practical lesson for boards and in-house teams is simple: defaulting to AI note-takers without guardrails is a governance fail. If you’re using them, treat outputs as drafts and review and correct them. Once it’s on the record, you may be stuck explaining it years later: Lander & Rogers

⚖️ Employment: The Queensland Court of Appeal has drawn a firm line on when employers will be vicariously liable for an employee’s criminal acts. The Court dismissed claims against Brisbane Catholic Education over alleged abuse by a school groundskeeper. Liability turns on whether the features of the employment — authority, power, trust, control — create a sufficiently strong connection between the role and the wrongdoing. Mere access to students or physical proximity was not enough. The job must provide the occasion for misconduct, not just the opportunity. The Court confirmed that non-teaching and ancillary roles will usually fall short unless they involve close, authoritative or intimate engagement with students: Wotton Kearney

⚖️ Arbitration: The English High Court has broken ranks. The Court held that holding that assignees cannot seek recognition or enforcement under the ICSID Convention, even where the underlying award is valid. In Operafund Eco-Invest v Kingdom of Spain, the Court read Art 54(2) narrowly, confining “a party” to the original arbitration parties. It rejected an implied right of assignment, despite no settled rule of customary international law. That stance squarely departs from Australia and the US, where courts have allowed assignees to enforce awards. Practically, this widens the enforcement gap across jurisdictions, forcing parties to rethink where and how they run enforcement: Corrs

Sussan Ley has stitched the Liberals back together with David Littleproud’s Nationals, ending a messy split sparked by Labor’s hate speech laws. The price is a temporary suspension of Nationals frontbenchers until March, with leaders still in the room. After two breakups in a year and an election drubbing, the promise is unity but the risk is that it frays again: The Guardian

In the US, Big Law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey will face off with Trump’s DOJ on the same day, after an appeals court consolidated their challenges to his executive orders. The firms won injunctions last year over access to classified material and client contracts. Now it’s one panel, one hearing, and a big test of presidential power over lawyers: Bloomberg Law

👑 HSF Kramer takes out the M&A value crown for 2025. It finished clear No.1 by value at $53.9bn, anchored by a handful of blockbuster energy, infrastructure and public M&A mandates. KWM and Allens locked in second and third, keeping the Big Three ahead. The big mover was Ashurst, jumping from 11th to 4th by value as it leaned hard into large, complex transactions: Point Blank

🏗️ Led by partner Adrian Perkins, KWM has advised Heidelberg Materials Australia on its ~$1.7bn cash acquisition of Maas Group Holdings’ construction materials division, including up to $120m in earn-outs. The deal delivers 40 quarries, 22 concrete plants, two asphalt operations and a recycling facility: KWM