Tag: lawyer

Good question. It should come as no surprise to hear that many lawyers – and business people in general – are already accessing some level of AI as a useful tool to help them maximise their efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services to their clientele. But, at the moment, we’re all just taking our first […]

Perhaps not surprisingly, I've been deluged recently with enquiries from small business operators and commercial space landlords about rental relief in the time of COVID-19. For those affected, here's a quick snapshot of what's on offer.
Last week was Privacy Awareness Week, which is a curious irony, given the current dilemma faced by millions of Australians – to download or not to download the Federal government's CovidSafe App.
It's sometimes said that one man's loss is another man's profit, and that's evidently true, even in these strange and troubled times. Just ask all those previously-struggling toilet paper and face mask makers. One curious example has even arisen in the criminal courts.
For the past couple of months, I have been receiving messages and calls from concerned relatives and friends back home in Malaysia wanting to know whether I have been affected by the recent bushfires. Thankfully, like most Gold Coasters, I wasn’t physically confronted by the crisis,  but of course we have all been touched by the devastating news of loss and destruction suffered by so many around us. It is awful to think the fires have claimed lives, destroyed homes, impacted at least a billion animals, and laid to waste more than 25 million acres of land.
Don’t you sometimes miss the good, old-fashioned Moral High Ground? As a post-war baby, the world I was born into seemed a brave and righteous one. Our fathers had just fought and died to free us all from fascism and oppression. The world had paid a terrible price, but it was all worth it.  In the end we won, and the Bad Guys lost.
School’s out! So hold onto your hats, folks, it's on again. As thousands of school-leavers descend upon Surfers Paradise for the annual ritual of revelry that has become known as Schoolies Week, thousands more parents hold their collective breath in dread and anticipation. The institutional shackles have been broken and cast aside, leaving only the unbridled celebratory passion of youth.
Over the next 24 months or so, the State government looks set to roll out various amendments to our traffic laws which will have a significant effect on penalties meted out to drink drivers on our roads. On 12 September this year, the Queensland Parliament assented to the Transport Legislation (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2019, which introduces substantial changes to a swathe of traffic regulation legislation. Amongst the more notable changes are provisions regarding the mandatory use of interlock devices for those convicted of any drink driving offence.
China has yet again cemented its reputation as the great 21st-century innovator by coming up with a novel new way of convincing its citizens to honour their legal and community responsibilities. In the interests of encouraging wayward debtors to pay their dues, Chinese Authorities have devised a none-too-subtle system of naming and shaming them by projecting their names and faces onto movie screens across the country, including recently during the previews to the worldwide smash hit movie Avengers: Endgame.
Lawyers have this thing they sometimes like to say. “Hard cases make bad law.” It’s true. About thirty years ago I got the job to represent a nice, sweet, softly-spoken lady who stabbed her husband 87 times with a serrated kitchen knife. Not surprisingly he ended up dead as a doornail.
Between January 2013 and December 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard evidence revealing that for generations many of our educational and other institutions presided over the systemic abuse of countless defenceless children. Tragically, most of those children, racked with shame, guilt and self-doubt, kept that abuse hidden from sight in deep, dark and destructive secrecy for decades. Some never whispered a word.
A generation ago, corporal punishment at school was commonplace. Canings and strappings that would now turn school mums like me apoplectic were once considered a routine and acceptable means of enforcing discipline and taming the unruly child.