Legal Resources

Separation is one of life’s hardest transitions - and one of the few where the legal system hands you a genuine advantage for being organised. This checklist is the roadmap we give clients in their first appointment: work through it in order, and you will avoid the mistakes that cost people years and tens of thousands of dollars. Week 1: Establish the Foundations 1. Date-stamp the separation. A short written message to your partner: “I consider our relationship ended as of today.” This date drives the divorce clock (12 months), the de facto property deadline (2 years), and evidentiary questions from contributions to add-backs.

Every commercial contract has a skeleton - the standard clauses lawyers argue about line by line. This guide explains what each essential clause actually does in a Queensland contract, the negotiating positions on each side, and the drafting traps that turn boilerplate into litigation. Governing law and jurisdiction Decides which state/country’s law interprets the contract and where disputes are fought. A Queensland business handed a NSW-governed contract faces different precedent, different procedural rules and travel. Negotiate home unless there is a compelling reason otherwise - and note the difference between governing law (which rules) and jurisdiction (which court).

Every purchase you make in Australia - every coffee machine, car service, haircut and kitchen renovation - arrives wrapped in a set of automatic legal promises called consumer guarantees. You did not sign them, the salesperson did not mention them, and no sign on the counter can remove them. They exist because Parliament wrote them into the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), and they are the foundation of nearly every “I want my money back” dispute.

Buying your first home is equal parts excitement and paperwork. Queensland’s process is actually well-signposted - if you know the route. This road map walks every stage, flags the traps, and collects the concessions that can save a first home buyer serious money. Stage 0: Before You Shop (finance and team) Pre-approval - know your borrowing power before inspecting; unconditional offers without finance clauses are how buyers lose deposits. Assemble your team early: a conveyancer/solicitor (we review the contract before you sign - the single cheapest insurance in the process), your broker, and a building inspector on speed dial. Budget beyond the deposit: stamp duty, transfer fees, searches, inspection costs, loan costs, insurance from contract date (yes - the property is your risk from 5pm the day you sign, even before settlement). Stage 1: The Contract Queensland uses standard REIQ (or ADL) contracts. The critical pieces:

Most business contracts are signed without a lawyer - and most contract disputes were avoidable at the drafting stage. This checklist is what we work through when reviewing a Queensland commercial contract. Use it to triage before you sign, and bring us in for the documents that matter (leases, supply agreements, shareholder deals, anything with personal guarantees). The 10 Clauses That Decide Who Wins 1. Parties and structure Who exactly is contracting - the company, the trust’s trustee, or you personally? Signing “for” a $2 shelf company with no assets is very different from a solvent trading entity. Check ACNs, trustee identifications, and whether directors are giving personal guarantees (see clause 10).

Your YouTube channel is a business asset. A copyright notice can affect more than one video. For a working creator, a YouTube copyright problem is rarely confined to a platform setting. It can affect the income from content you made, a sponsor’s campaign timetable, the right to use content again, your reputation with the audience and the security of the channel itself. This guide explains what a creator, influencer manager, agency or production company needs to do when a claim, takedown or strike arrives. It is deliberately practical and detailed. Use it to create a record, make a commercial decision and know when a formal response needs more than a template.

Australian Consumer Law (ACL) gives every Australian automatic rights whenever they buy goods or services. Businesses cannot contract out of them, “no refund” signs are largely illegal, and yet most consumers accept “store policy” answers they should never hear. This guide explains what you are actually entitled to, how to demand it, and what to do when a business refuses. 1. The Consumer Guarantees: Rights You Have Automatically Every purchase of goods or services (under $100,000, or any price for household use) comes with unwritten guarantees under the ACL:

Somewhere in Australia this week, a songwriter opened an AI tool, typed a prompt, and produced something that sounded, to their ear, like a finished song. Whether that moment created anything they can actually own is a much harder question than it looks, and the answer has just shifted twice in the space of seven days. On 25 August 2026 the Australian Recording Industry Association banned recordings that are wholly or primarily AI-generated from the ARIA Charts and ARIA Awards.1 Days later, an American publisher filed billion-dollar lawsuits against two of the biggest AI music platforms on the market,2 a German court found one of those same platforms liable for reproducing existing songs from memory,3 and Apple Music told the industry it will start labelling tracks made with AI.4 None of this happened by accident, and none of it happened in isolation from a much older story: Australian copyright law has been arguing about what counts as genuine human creativity in music since long before anyone had heard of a large language model.

Queensland startups face a complex web of legal obligations from the moment of incorporation. This master guide covers every major legal framework a founder must navigate, integrating general commercial law with the specific regulatory demands of artificial intelligence, software development, data privacy, and venture capital.