A Reddit thread from a second-year Big Law associate has junior lawyers spiralling: AI's chewing through drafting, due diligence and document review so fast the job's turning into "rubber stamping". "You’re in, and the ladder is burning behind you, " one commenter warned. Another commenter was more blunt, saying "we’re all cooked." Others aren't panicking, pointing to the fact that AI is still botching basic footnote edits: NB

⚖️ Privilege: In Da Silva v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Mr Da Silva tried to split a lawyer's draft submission from her Microsoft Word comments on it, arguing only the comments were privileged. Thawley J disagreed. Where a law firm is engaged to prepare a submission, drafts bearing a lawyer's comments are predominantly for seeking instructions and conveying advice on the exercise of a statutory power, so the whole document is privileged, not just the annotations. Having inspected the document himself, the judge confirmed as much, underscoring that a single privileged communication cannot be artificially divided into privileged and non‑privileged components: Federal Court

⚖️ M&A: The Government has introduced ‘targeted refinements’ to Australia’s merger regime via Schedule 4 of a Treasury Laws Amendment Bill. The headline change: acquisitions that should’ve been notified to the ACCC but weren’t will shift from automatically ‘void’ to ‘voidable’, requiring a Federal Court application before anything gets unwound. On ‘stale’ approvals (those older than 12 months), parties can now seek extensions of up to six months at a time, rather than re-notifying from scratch. Separately, the ‘associate’ definition is being narrowed to focus on practical control and influence, carving out things like minority protection rights and arm’s length agreements that shouldn’t trigger joint control notification: G+T

⚖️ Consumer: Lactalis Australia has paid $59,400 in penalties after the ACCC issued three infringement notices over its milk labelling. The regulator alleges Golden North Country Fresh and Ferguson Valley WA Dairy Fresh 2L products were marketed as ‘fresh’ despite containing substantial reconstituted skim milk or lactose. The ACCC’s broader dairy industry sweep found most processors label accurately, making Lactalis something of an outlier. The alleged conduct falls foul of s 29(1)(a) of the Australian Consumer Law: ACCC

Persistent high inflation has driven a 5.1% fall in Australians' real wages since March 2021, per the OECD's latest employment outlook. It's a "sustained erosion of purchasing power", compounded by a decline in the real minimum wage — one of only 11 OECD countries where that happened. Only NZ, Czechia, Italy and Sweden saw similar drops, and even they're recovering faster than we are: AFR

Turns out the Iran ceasefire had an expiry date. After Tehran allegedly hit three commercial vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz, including a gas carrier and a Saudi oil tanker, the US launched a fresh wave of strikes and Treasury yanked the waiver that let Iranian oil flow. Oil prices spiked within hours: Bloomberg

⚒️ Mallesons and Ashurst Perkins Coie are on opposite sides of South32's US$5.6bn exit from aluminium, offloading bauxite, alumina and smelting assets across Australia, Brazil and South Africa to Alcoa. Completion's tipped for H1 2027. More on the deal & lawyers acting here: Point Blank

🚢 Qube has locked in Supreme Court approval for its $11.7bn takeover by a Macquarie Asset Management-led consortium. Qube's shares get suspended Wednesday, with Develop Global stepping into its ASX 200 spot from Thursday: Capital Brief

⛽️ Adnoc Distribution is snapping up Shell's South African fuel stations at a US$1bn enterprise value, its first foothold in Africa's biggest economy. The deal delivers 580 retail sites plus wholesale, aviation and lubricants operations: Bloomberg