Junior lawyer Natali Curukovski lasted four weeks before calling her job "soul-sucking" on TikTok, with her video racking up 300k+ views. Her take: "You're overworked and underpaid”, calling the job “soul-sucking”. Her firm asked her to delete it, but she stood her ground, and now she's sacked: Point Blank, TikTok

⚖️ AI/Litigation: A UNSW report identified 520 instances of generative AI misuse in legal proceedings across ten jurisdictions between January 2023 and September 2025, including 87 Australian cases. Those cases mostly involved self-repped litigants filing hallucinated citations and fake quotes. Courts have already sanctioned practitioners over this, and in Valu, confirmed lawyers remain responsible for verifying AI-generated material even without intent to mislead. The next frontier is deepfakes: fabricated videos, images and recordings now cheap and easy to produce, threatening evidence like texts, photos and screenshots that courts have long treated as inherently reliable: Lander & Rogers

⚖️ Competition: The ACCC's new mandatory merger regime is showing its teeth. On 31 July, it approved Heidelberg Materials' acquisition of Maas Group's construction materials business, but only after Heidelberg agreed to divest three ready mix concrete plants and a quarry across Queensland and NSW, its first ever conditional Phase 1 clearance since the regime started on 1 January 2026. A week later, on 7 August, it blocked Kegstar's bid for Konvoy's assets after a full Phase 2 review, finding the proposed remedy didn't resolve concerns the deal would create a monopoly in keg pooling services: G+T, ACCC

⚖️ Regulatory: Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has admitted breaching the Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) over a cyber attack on its Alliance Bank business. Weaknesses like weak password settings and duplicate customer passwords were flagged by 2020 penetration testing but never fixed. Between 3 and 7 March 2023, a hacker accessed 257 accounts and made 286 unauthorised transactions totalling roughly $490k, of which $140k was unrecovered (customers were fully reimbursed). APRA has commenced Federal Court proceedings, with both sides proposing an $8m penalty, subject to court approval: APRA

Grounds of Appeal is open.

Legora's pop-up cafe kicks off this morning at Artistry Garden, One Farrer Place. Every beverage is free until 11.30 AM. Flat white, long black, iced matcha. Order whatever you like.

The Legora team will be there all morning. Ask how firms and in-house teams use AI to review faster, draft smarter, and handle complex workflows end-to-end. Or just say hello. No sign up, no promo code needed.

Can't make it today? There's a second hearing tomorrow, same time, same place.

Learn more about Legora here.

Victoria's world-first work from home laws, giving eligible workers two days a week from home, were meant to start 1 September. Not anymore. New Premier Ben Carroll has pushed the start date back to July 2027 after business groups warned it'd hike costs and send jobs interstate. He insists he still backs the laws, just wants business onside: Bloomberg

Albo wants Australia to lead the world on regulating AI, pointing to his under-16s social media ban as proof he can pull it off. Problem is, he's never actually used AI himself. Opposition AI point man Aaron Violi said: "I'm staggered the PM would give a headline national speech about AI but hadn't taken 15 minutes to download Claude or ChatGPT": Capital Brief

🚗 FleetPartners has a fresh auction on its hands, with Pacific Equity Partners' SG Fleet bumping its bid to $4 a share (~$860m), overtaking Element Fleet Management's push for a quick exclusivity deal: AFR

🚢 Hanwha has lobbed a non-binding US$1.2bn (A$1.7bn) offer for Austal's US shipbuilding arm, and the board's waved through due diligence. Hanwha already holds a 19.9% stake after an earlier full-takeover tilt got knocked back: ASX