Is the Swiss verein over? The structure allowed for global scale without global commitment — letting firms merge under one brand while keeping profits and liabilities ring-fenced by region. Now, DLA Piper’s ditching it after nearly two decades, Baker McKenzie killed local profit pools, KWM’s splitting its China and Australia arms, and Norton Rose Fulbright merged its EMEA and Aussie books. Read our deep dive here: Point Blank

⚖️ Litigation: The High Court has confirmed in SunshineLoans v ASIC that a judge who makes adverse credit findings at a contravention hearing isn't automatically disqualified from running the penalty hearing. The Court held there's no logical connection between credibility findings at one stage and apprehended bias at the next; those findings were ones the judge was required to make and could properly carry forward. Good news for regulators, but a strategic flag for respondents: if you call witnesses at the contravention stage and they cop a credibility hammering, that baggage travels with them into penalty. Choose your battles (and your witnesses) accordingly: Ashurst

⚖️ IP: Co-developing IP with another party? Think twice before defaulting to joint ownership. Under Australian law, where two parties contribute to creating IP and the contract is silent, equal ownership applies regardless of who did the heavy lifting. That means a 1% contributor gets the same rights as the 99% contributor. Worse, joint owners of copyright and trade marks can't assign, license or enforce without the other's consent, creating deadlock risk if strategies diverge. The cleaner route is usually sole ownership to one party with back-to-back licences or revenue-sharing for the other, avoiding the need for consensus on every exploitation decision: KWM

⚖️ Employment: is set to make working from home a legal right from 1 September, with small businesses getting until 1 July 2027 to comply. Under the proposed reforms, any employee whose role can be performed remotely will be entitled to up to two days per week from home, no qualifying ground needed. That's a big shift from the current Fair Work Act regime, where employers can refuse flexible work requests on reasonable business grounds. The right will sit in the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic), with disputes running through VEOHRC conciliation and then VCAT. Draft legislation is expected in July 2026: Maddocks

Sony Music's found more than 135,000 AI-generated songs on streaming platforms using voice cloning to rip off artists like Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Queen. The fakes are being monetised by their creators, causing what Sony calls direct commercial harm to legitimate artists. Sony wants them all pulled, but with anyone able to clone a voice using free AI tools, how can you keep up? TDA

Trump's given Iran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or he'll bomb its power plants. Iran says if that happens, it’ll shut the strait completely and hit US and Israeli infrastructure across the region. The strait carries a fifth of the world's oil and LNG, and has been effectively closed since the war began: Bloomberg

🛏️ Gilbert + Tobin is advising Koala on its $68m IPO, continuing G+T's run as go-to ASX float adviser after last year’s $2.3bn Virgin Australia listing. Koala has lodged its prospectus at $3.40 a share for a $305m market cap, a scaled-back second attempt after the original $400m float was pulled mid-2025: Point Blank

🏄 Former Billabong executives are pitching KMD Brands to demerge Rip Curl and sell it to them. The buyout proposal from a consortium led by Stokehouse’s Paul Naude, has been knocked back, but they continue to press for due diligence. KMD’s shares have slumped 44% to 16c: AFR