Lander & Rogers just cracked 52% female partners, the biggest firm to hit parity. Kennedys and Squire Patton Boggs posted even higher rates. Russell Kennedy, Addisons and Mallesons aren't far behind either, the latter promoting nearly an all-female cohort this year round. Meanwhile, Piper Alderman’s gone backwards, down to 27%: AFR

⚖️ Disputes/AI: The Supreme Court of Queensland has ruled that answers generated by ChatGPT are irrelevant and inadmissible when interpreting a lease. In Inspired Medical v S Mohindra, the applicant tried to use ChatGPT's take on the ordinary meaning of "medical centre" to support its case. Muir J rejected it, likening the approach to relying on a dictionary definition and noting the accuracy of AI‑generated answers can't be verified. Her Honour confirmed that construing a contract remains a matter for the Court alone, applying orthodox principles of interpretation rather than chatbot output: McCullough Robertson

⚖️ Environment: From 1 July, Australia's environmental laws got their biggest shake-up yet, with the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) now up and running under the EPBC Act reforms. The NEPA's CEO can issue stop work orders, hand down formal rulings, and enforce bigger penalties, up to $16.5m for corporates. New 'compliance audits' need no notice or trigger, and public transparency registers will name proponents caught in non-compliance. There's a carve-out too: proponents can now ask the Minister to approve minor or preparatory works, like geotech surveys, while the rest of their project is still under assessment: Clayton Utz

⚖️ Misleading Conduct: Domain is suing REA Group in the Federal Court. At issue is REA's 'we help 9 in 10 buyers find the one' campaign. Domain claims REA couldn't actually prove that figure, or show it beats rivals like Domain, with reliable data. REA says the number comes from Deloitte-reviewed analysis of over a million sales. REA has also cross-claimed, alleging Domain represented that listings with its Matterport Suite product would get 5.5x more listing views and 4.2x more buyer enquiries than comparable listings without it, based on a small, cherry-picked sample. Both platforms are accusing each other of overstating their stats: Lawyerly

The Christian Brothers, the Catholic order, just talked a judge into a moratorium on payouts to child sex abuse victims. Cash strapped after burning $1.7m a week, they convinced Justice Scott Nixon in the NSW Supreme Court to pause all 240-plus claims until a creditors' scheme is in place. Meanwhile, they've spent a decade quietly offloading up to $2bn in property to Edmund Rice Education Australia for $1 a pop, and apparently that's off limits to survivors: ABC, The Guardian

Donald Trump made over 21,000 share trades in 2025, averaging 85 a day, worth somewhere between US$600m and US$1.86bn. Plenty landed straight after his own policy bombshells — 616 trades the day before his tariffs hit, another 640 once he lifted them. The White House insists it's all "independently managed" with zero conflicts: Bloomberg

📈 Global M&A just had its biggest first half ever, hitting US$2.8 trillion, up 48% year-on-year, even as deal count hit a six-year low. Forty-seven deals north of US$10bn drove nearly half of all volume: Reuters

🏆 Goldman Sachs has reclaimed the top spot in Dealogic’s Australia M&A league tables, advising on $US30.1bn of deals this financial year and edging out UBS, Macquarie, Barrenjoey and Citi. Canaccord Genuity topped the ECM tables, banking $US36.5bn in raisings: AFR

👀 Elliott Investment Management's campaign against Northern Star just got real — according to the Australian, takeover offers have actually landed on directors' desks, even if they're too opportunistic to accept as is. Gold Fields is the obvious suitor everyone's eyeing: The Australian