It’s that time of year when we say, “Wow, is it that time of year already? Where did the time go? How is it Christmas?” And, to any unwelcome emails or pesky projects threatening your beeline to a blissful week of Christmas-to-New-Year blursdays, it’s time to roll out trusty lines like: “Can this wait until January?”
This means it’s also time to reflect on the major legal moments that defined 2025. From poisonous mushrooms to hallucinating AI, to the social media ban and the Family Law Amendment Act… it’s been a busy year for lawmakers and courts.
And so, as we close out the year, these are some of the notable legal stories that shaped our watercooler conversations.
The Curious Case of the Hallucinated Cases: Mr Dayal
It’s no secret that AI is fond of making stuff up. In fact, it’s such an issue that lawyers all over the world are getting called out by courts for failing to check their own work, which, in most cases, means checking whether legal research produced by AI reflects cases or law that actually exists.
Much of this is due to misunderstandings around what AI can do, what it should do, and how we should work with it, amidst wild promises from behemoth AI companies about how much time you’ll save if you “just use AI.”
Our local cautionary tale is Mr Dayal, a lawyer caught in the unfortunate crossfire of how we’re adopting AI. Mr Dayal used an AI-powered legal research tool within his practice management software, but didn’t check the results of the research himself or use the free verification service provided by the software, which allowed for the AI results to be checked by a practising lawyer in the same field.
Instead, he tendered AI-generated legal authorities riddled with inaccurate citations. Consequences were severe and significant. The Victorian Legal Services Board prohibited Mr Dayal from practise as a principal or handling trust money, and required him to undertake supervised legal practise for two years, with quarterly check-ins.
Just because you used AI at uni doesn’t mean you should do it at work…
Alongside Mr Dayal’s unhappy dalliance with AI is the case of Murray v Victoria. This involved a junior lawyer who used Google Scholar to come up with anthropological and historical reports and papers to support a native title claim. The lawyer didn’t read the reports, or even try to find them. It was simply rolled into the footnotes. Neat trick, right? Why would Google Scholar lie?
However, when the respondent, First National Legal and Research Services, tried to find the documents referenced in the footnotes, they came up empty. Questions were raised as to how the junior lawyer found these documents. It came to light that the junior lawyer had worked away from the office, and as they lacked access to the source material, they relied on Google Scholar to find the material, which they said they’d used during university without incident.
It appeared that in this case, Google Scholar produced a false document citation due to Generative AI. When queried, the lawyer tried to replicate her initial results and couldn’t find the documents either.
As a junior, the principal acknowledged that while the work was performed collaboratively, he was not aware that anyone had checked the junior lawyer’s work. The principal accepted this was his error as a supervisor. The firm was required to pay indemnity costs.
The moral of the story? No matter how convincing the AI sounds, always verify…or risk becoming the next cautionary tale.
Australia rejects copyright exemption for training AI
While we’re on the topic of AI, the Australian Government came down hard on the side of creatives in 2025. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland confirmed the government will not introduce a copyright exemption permitting AI companies to train their models on Australian books, art, photography, and other creative works, despite the Productivity Commission proposing such a carve-out in its August report.
This positions Australia in stark contrast to the United States, where courts have determined that AI training constitutes "fair use" under copyright law, essentially treating AI systems as transformative users that digest and reimagine source material. Australia, however, operates under a narrower framework of copyright exceptions (covering areas including academia, research, and parody), which doesn't readily accommodate commercial AI applications.
The creative sector has welcomed the decision, with industry voices arguing that generative AI functions as "a highly sophisticated probability machine" that imitates rather than innovates, and that protecting human creativity shouldn't be sacrificed for commercial expediency.
The Government has flagged a consultation process through its Copyright and AI Reference Group. Their aim: to develop frameworks ensuring creators are "fairly remunerated," potentially including collective or voluntary licensing systems and a copyright small claims forum. The decision signals that AI companies seeking to utilise Australian creative content will need to navigate proper licensing arrangements rather than relying on broad legal exemptions.
In other words: Australia's creative works aren't an all-you-can-eat buffet for AI training models, and Big Tech will need to bring its wallet to the table.
Family Law Amendment Act came into effect
In June 2025, Australia’s family law system got one of its biggest glow-ups in decades, with the Family Law Amendment Act 2024 making significant changes to how property settlements work after a breakup. The once-mysterious four-step test, previously scattered across years of case law, is now neatly spelled out in the legislation, along with clearer rules around contributions, wastage, liabilities, and even the impact of family violence (including economic abuse). Kathryn Kearley, family lawyer and lecturer, says the changes don’t reinvent the wheel but may make life a whole lot easier for self-represented litigants.
The family pet also received some attention from the reforms. Moving forward, pets will no longer be treated like the couch or the coffee machine: “companion animals” now get their own special considerations. But before you start drafting a shared-care arrangement for Captain Fluffypants, don’t get too excited; joint custody of pets is officially off the table.
First-ever Australian Probate Report released
Another notable moment this year emerged from the release of the first-ever Australian Probate Report, which highlighted the growing pressures facing Wills and Estates practitioners as the nation enters a $5.4 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer. The report revealed that thousands of suburban and regional firms collectively handle around $150 billion in inherited wealth each year. However, each firm tends to handle just one or two probate matters annually.
Practitioners also reported rising complexity driven by digital assets, cross-border estates, and client expectations for speed and transparency, with 77% prioritising operational streamlining and 60% experimenting with AI tools. Stark differences between state probate registries (Victoria scoring 8/10 versus NSW’s 3.5/10) further underscored the uneven landscape. With more than 90% of firms saying they would conduct deeper estate discovery if it were cost-effective, the report ignited a national conversation about how lawyers can stay confident and capable as probate work becomes increasingly intricate.
Australian teens kicked off social media from 10 December
In July 2025, Australia doubled down on its mission to shield teenagers from the insidious effects of social media, expanding its world-first ban for under-16s to include YouTube. This was in response to revelations from the internet regulator that 37% of minors had encountered harmful content on the platform, the worst showing among all social media sites.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed the move as backing up Australian parents in the fight against platforms that negatively affect children's wellbeing, reminding Big Tech of their "social responsibility" and declaring "I'm calling time on it."
The government's goal is clear: protect children from AI-supercharged misinformation, online harassment and bullying, and algorithm-driven rabbit holes designed to suck attention. The ban officially kicks in on December 10, but Meta's announced it will start axing teen accounts from Instagram, Facebook, and Threads from December 4. For Australian teenagers, this means that if you haven’t downloaded your posts, connections, and years of digital footprints prior to this deadline, you’ll be locked out until you’re of legal age to use social media again.
With platforms facing fines of up to $49.5 million if they don't comply, Australia is embarking on a world-first social experiment: teenage life without legal access to social media. Welcome to the ‘90s, kids.
New Tort of Privacy set to affect 90% of Australian business
Australia's new tort of privacy dropped in June 2025, and it's set to impact the 90% of Australian businesses that have been flying under the privacy radar. Chiefly, this means smaller operators turning over less than $3 million.
Privacy and technology lawyer Matthew Hodgkinson says claimants now need to tick five boxes to win a case: prove an invasion happened, show they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, establish the conduct was intentional or reckless, demonstrate the public interest favours their privacy, and – here's the kicker — prove the invasion was "serious."
There are carve-outs for journalists who follow professional codes and government agencies acting in good faith, but everyone else should be sweating a bit. With a tight one-year limitation period and the likelihood of big-ticket litigation around data breaches and doxxing, businesses need to get their act together fast: update those privacy policies, lock down data security, and maybe have a compliance chat with a privacy lawyer before they find themselves on the wrong end of a claim that could've been avoided.
When life imitates an Agatha Christie novel
Last but not least, the case that gripped a nation, and the Beef Wellington we'll never forget. Enter Erin Patterson and the infamous mushroom murders.
In July 2023, Erin Patterson invited five family members to lunch at her rural Australian home for a Saturday lunch. Awkward, because her ex, and only familial connection to her lunch guests, didn’t turn up, but still well within the realm of ‘awkard social invitations you feel obliged to attend.’
Erin and her four guests tucked into this now infamous beef wellington, and after an orange cake dessert, Erin finished with a shock announcement that she had cancer. Weird lunch, but who hasn’t sat through a weird lunch?
Tragically, within a week, three guests were dead from death cap mushroom poisoning. One was fighting for his life in a coma, and Patterson was under investigation for murder. After a nine-week trial, the jury in May 2025 found Patterson guilty of murdering her estranged in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, while local pastor Ian Wilkinson miraculously survived to tell the tale.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers served up a damning case: Patterson had foraged toxic mushrooms from nearby towns (helpfully tracked by her phone data), wrapped them in Beef Wellington while conspicuously eating from a different colored plate herself, lured her victims with a fake cancer diagnosis for extra sympathy points, then frantically disposed of a mushroom-laced dehydrator and wiped multiple phones clean. Patterson's defence insisted it was simply a tragic foraging mix-up; her lies stemmed from panic. But the jury wasn't swallowing it, and nor did the judge.
In September 2025, Justice Christopher Beale sentenced Patterson to three life sentences plus 25 years for attempted murder. She’ll be eligible for parole in 33 years. For a self-described "mushroom lover" who once bragged in Facebook groups about sneaking "powdered mushrooms in everything," Australia has delivered its verdict: this was no culinary accident, and Patterson has ensured we’ll never look at mushrooms – or Beef Wellingtons – quite the same way ever again.
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