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Fol­low­ing can­di­dates or employ­ees on social net­work­ing sites: A minefield

In Brief Social net­work­ing is not a fad, but a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way we com­mu­ni­cate. Thus it is no sur­prise that employ­ers are increas­ing­ly using social net­work­ing sites to vet poten­tial employ­ees and to mon­i­tor the behav­iour of cur­rent employ­ees. How­ev­er, this devel­op­ment rais­es sig­nif­i­cant pri­va­cy con­cerns and can expose…

Beware — Adverse Action may result in reinstatement

In Brief The last thing any employ­er wants is to be forced into rein­stat­ing an employ­ee after a messy gen­er­al pro­tec­tions dis­pute. Until recent­ly, most gen­er­al pro­tec­tions claims have result­ed in either the dis­missal of an employ­ee or an award of dam­ages and com­pen­sa­tion. How­ev­er the recent case of CFMEU v Pil­bara Iron…

Update on Parental leave

On 1 Octo­ber 2012 the bal­ance of var­i­ous pro­vi­sions of the Paid Parental Leave and Oth­er Leg­is­la­tion Amend­ment (Dad and Part­ner Pay and Oth­er Mea­sure) Act 2012 will com­mence. This piece of leg­is­la­tion in par­tic­u­lar, amends two pieces of leg­is­la­tion: the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 and the Fair Work Act…

Swaab acknowl­edged for social media usage in Lawyers Weekly

In a study of 80 Aus­tralian law firms, Swaab has been includ­ed in a select group of law firms util­is­ing four of the five cen­tral social media net­works. Read the full Lawyers Week­ly Arti­cle on the BRR Media Aus­tralian Legal Sec­tor Social Media Snap­shot. All depart­ments at Swaab have their own Twit­ter…

Swaab wel­comes new fam­i­ly law senior associate

We are delight­ed to announce the appoint­ment of senior asso­ciate Karen Hardy to our high­ly regard­ed fam­i­ly law team. Karen brings with her exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the area of fam­i­ly law, pre­dom­i­nant­ly deal­ing with prop­er­ty divi­sion, par­ent­ing dis­putes, main­te­nance mat­ters and estate lit­i­ga­tion. Karen is an accred­it­ed spe­cial­ist in fam­i­ly law…

Angela Har­vey fea­tured in Lawyers Weekly

Fea­tured in the Lawyers Week­ly part­ner pro­file, Swaab cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial part­ner Angela Har­vey dis­cuss­es every­thing from the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges of being a lawyer, to her love for Paris and Louboutin shoes…

Swaab fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly on our unique work­place culture

Swaab CEO Bron­wyn Pott met with Lawyers Week­ly to dis­cuss our fir­m’s flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ments and prac­ti­cal billing struc­ture that has helped to attract and main­tain qual­i­ty staff and result­ed in our unique work­place culture…

Mary Digiglio fea­tured in Lawyers Weekly

Fea­tured in the Lawyers Week­ly Part­ner Pro­file, Swaab prop­er­ty part­ner Mary Digiglio dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cant changes in prop­er­ty legal work over her career and the impor­tance of util­is­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances to the advan­tage of her employ­ees and clients…

Swaab fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly on strate­gic SAP tech­nol­o­gy acquisition

The Swaab team led by cor­po­rate part­ner Alis­tair Jaque and senior asso­ciate Andrew Drap­er has fea­tured in Lawyers Week­ly on advis­ing pub­li­cal­ly list­ed, IT solu­tions com­pa­ny UXC in rela­tion to the acqui­si­tion of Aus­tralian spe­cial­ist SAP con­sult­ing firm, Stream, by their SAP soft­ware and ser­vices inte­gra­tor sub­sidiary, Oxy­gen Busi­ness Solutions…

High Court — Bar­clay Deci­sion — Stop Press 

The High Court of Aus­tralia unan­i­mous­ly deter­mined that the first instance deci­sion of Jus­tice Tracey in the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia was the cor­rect one, there­by over­turn­ing the deci­sion of the Full Bench of the Fed­er­al Court. Mr Bar­clay was an Aus­tralia Edu­ca­tion­al Union (AEU) rep­re­sen­ta­tive in his work­place, Bendi­go Region­al…

Apple v Sam­sung case pro­vides time­ly reminder of lit­i­ga­tion doc­u­ment reten­tion requirements

In Brief A recent case involv­ing Apple and Sam­sung pro­vides a time­ly reminder to busi­ness­es about the impor­tance of prop­er doc­u­ment reten­tion when cur­rent or antic­i­pat­ed lit­i­ga­tion arises.  Doc­u­ment reten­tion in Australia Aus­trali­a’s legal require­ments in rela­tion to doc­u­ment reten­tion are often met with con­cern due to uncer­tain­ty about obligations.  Lit­i­ga­tion is a key…

Crowd fund­ing — the new source of finance

ASIC has been mon­i­tor­ing the increased use of crowd fund­ing in Aus­tralia for invest­ment purposes. ​‘Crowd fund­ing’ involves the use of the inter­net and social media to raise funds in sup­port of a spe­cif­ic project or busi­ness idea. Project spon­sors typ­i­cal­ly receive some nom­i­nal reward in return for their funds. On 14 August…

Copy­right and the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Issues Paper Released

The high­ly antic­i­pat­ed ALRC issues paper on the Copy­right and the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my was released on 20 August 2012. The issues paper requests for com­men­tary on over 50 ques­tions relat­ing to the appro­pri­ate­ness of the cur­rent copy­right excep­tions. These also cov­er con­verged media and new tech­nolo­gies in rela­tion to copy­right which…

Gen­er­al pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions of the Fair Work Act

In Brief The Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tion Pro­vi­sions of the Fair Work Act (the Act) (being a con­sol­i­da­tion and enhance­ment of var­i­ous employ­ee rights pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained in the Work­place Rela­tions Act) present a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge to all employ­ers. The Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tion Pro­vi­sions cov­er, amongst oth­er things,: Work­place rights of the employ­ee (see below). The rights of…

Overview of Fair Work Act oblig­a­tions for employers

In Brief Expe­ri­ence to date has shown that busi­ness­es are strug­gling to keep up with the dynam­ic indus­tri­al and work­place rela­tions land­scape gen­er­at­ed by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments. The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to alert employ­ers to changes of sig­nif­i­cance and to things which need to be addressed urgent­ly by employ­ers…