Fair Work Commission condemns 'plain wrong' AI legal advice
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
> Sadnan Khan was ordered to pay $1,230 towards the supermarket giant's legal fees after a landmark Fair Work Commission decision found he used AI as a "quasi-legal advisor" to challenge his dismissal, despite repeat warnings his case had "no substantial prospects of success".
> "I have taken the very rare step of ordering him to pay some of the employer's legal costs, because his unreasonable conduct caused his former employer to incur those costs unnecessarily," Fair Work Commission deputy president Michael Easton said in the tribunal's decision last week.
The article is balanced; it also cites the case of a computer science lecturer at Macquarie University who successfully challenged the university's treatment of him using AI. (Over the past decade or so, Mac Uni has become very attached to the idea that minimum wage is enough for academic staff.)
So it's the same story as we've been hearing for more than a year now: LLMs are only useful if you ignore all the fluff where they tell you how great everything is, and know how to extract and interpret the parts where they say something of substance, and actually do the work of determining whether the thing is bullshitting you.
Key section:
> Two days after Mr Khan filed his claim, Fair Work Commission staff sent Mr Khan an email advising that the Commission may not have the power to deal with his case because he had not worked for the minimum employment period. [...]
> In the morning of Friday 31 July 2026 I took the time to write to Mr Khan and explain to him in plain English why his case was unlikely to succeed. Mr Khan was encouraged to discontinue his application, and advised that there could be costs consequences if he did not discontinue his claim. [...]
> Khan sent a reply email that same morning. Mr Khan’s AI generated email once again addressed the wrong end date and repeated the same irrelevant AI-generated arguments. Mr Khan’s email did not engage, at all, with the matters raised in the earlier email from the Commission
> From October 20, applicants to the Fair Work Commission will need to disclose AI use, while a template to help AI-dependent litigants has been implemented.
That sounds very fair to me. I wouldn't categorize that as disruption to other people's cases.
It's good the tribunal acknowledges we can't all necessarily afford the costs you may incur in those initial discussions with a lawyer. While there are pro-bono lawyers they have to make sure they're taking the cases with the best prospects for success so they don't go out of business themselves.
> "Most community members are aware of this kind of property of AI now where it has a kind of sycophantic tendency … and may in fact encourage people to believe that there are legs in a claim they're making when that may not in fact be the case."
It'll be interesting to see how the AI providers are going to balance the need for models to be engaging enough to keep the tokens flowing but not so engaging they give bad advice to encourage continued conversations.
The problem is more one of proximity to a city where they're based, rather than one of cash, or one of being an Australian citizen - the service is only for citizens.
I disagree, demand is outstripping supply.
Only 8% of households meet the tests for accessing Legal Aid and I'm not convinced in the current cost of living crisis the remaining 92% have enough spare cash to spend on lawyers.
The volume and complexity of legal issues in the community continues to outpace any growth in Legal Aid’s ability to respond.
In Victoria, the Public Understanding of Law Survey found that for every 10 respondents there are over 12 legal problems, with over half of those problems needing legal assistance that is not available.
Despite this growing demand, the report warns of a “justice deficit” with only eight per cent of households across Australia meeting the strict income and assets tests for accessing Legal Aid. [1]
[1]: https://nationallegalaid.org.au/policy-and-advocacy/reports/...
Point number two of which, is "There are parts of Australia where there are little or no legal assistance services provided to disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Governments should work with service providers and organisations like Victoria Law Foundation and the NSW Law and Justice Foundation to better understand these geographic areas of legal need and the nature and cost of the services needed to efficiently fill these gaps."
A large number of those unable to be serviced, are in fact, a question of proximity.
[0] https://www.ag.gov.au/legal-system/publications/independent-...
A recent thought I had about the AI rollout: it’s such a massively unbalanced bet. We are experiencing right now the negative aspects of AI, we are paying for that. For a chance that maybe some hypothetical, sci-fi-like technology exists in the future. So we know we will always suffer the losing end of the bet, and we have no idea if we will win, or even how that would look like to win.
In this example we see how the commission is under stress, something we see across the board, and the benefits so far have been that software and emails are written faster, and maybe something more will come at some point in the future (that we also know will have its own set of externalities).
It’s insane that such a small group can decide to play that gamble for the rest of society, worldwide
It is unbalanced, but you are hiding the unbalance behind "we". Some are rolling it out in a way to cause maximal damage to others now. The "others" are experiencing negative aspects.
You see that in politics a lot - the "politicians" in general or the institutions are blamed for acts sone ovewhelmingly mostly one party.
In the long term, it enables bad actors. And back in AI diacussion, those bad actors are really trying to frame themselves as saviors ... from danger they are creating by own hype.
- Filing a lawsuit
- Applying to a university
- Tailoring a cover-letter for a job application
- Writing to a local government body to complain about street lighting
- Writing a homework essay as part of a class at school
Things like this have always, supposedly, been available to everyone - but preparing those documents and jumping through the necessary hoops has been hard enough that the flow of applications has stayed at a manageable level.
LLMs destroy that balance. The volume of applications goes through the roof. Now we have to redesign all of these decades- or centuries- old human processes, without any warning that we would have to do so.
1. buying/scalping concert/event tickets: in the past it would have been unrealistic to scalp tickets for faraway venues
2. fraud/identity verification: now anyone can apply for an account in your name anywhere as long as they enough personal information about you without a human confirming you are who you say
3. public shaming/harassment: any moment of yours in public now has a non-zero risk of going public throughout the world
4. spread of conspiracy theories/propaganda: now all the village idiots can find each other
It was mind-numbing. The non-ai applicants were obvious and really stood out as the best answers.
I have no moral judgment here, but it seems like a classic pendulum. Part of the demand for AI is coming because our systems are intentionally friction-filled.
Look at how AI can hack other companies and cause harm, but no one gets arrested. One of the reddit founders was forced into suicide over a bogus conviction over distilling jstor and now every AI when wielded by a tech company gets to do the same thing without their CEOs going to jail for 20 years.
Stop supporting things that give all the power to a handful of CEOs.
The system is specifically designed for self represented litigants to be able to navigate the process and get a just outcome without being ruined by legal costs if they lose. It generally works well.
That’s not the same thing as allowing frivolous and vexatious claims to get up, as the applicant attempted here.
Thus it might be the first example of AI winning a case that sets some kind of precedent.
At the very least it shows that AI can put together coherent legal arguments even when there are no close precedents or case law it can refer to. This was something a lot of lawyers didn't believe would be possible for AI to do.
I would put the success more on the person, than the AI, for that particular case.
I really don't like where this is going.
[1] https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Practice-and-Proce... [2] https://www.pi.nsw.gov.au/resources/procedural-directions/pr...
You cannot surrender your legal obligations to an autonomous system, without violating the Commons. You would need to overturn several hundred years of legal precedent first.
Ha ha. What is the legal system but autonomous, for those without the money to access it fairly?
Give me a break. These are the talking points of the elite scared that the playing field is being leveled by technology. I'm on the side of technology on this one.