Author: Dr Will Higgs PhD

Lives and Works in Sydney, Australia
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Will artificial intelligence make the legal community more innovative?

Will artificial intelligence make the legal community more innovative?
Access to artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make lawyers more innovative by streamlining routine tasks, enhancing legal research, and uncovering patterns in complex data. With AI handling document review, contract analysis, and predictive analytics, lawyers can redirect their time toward strategy, creative argumentation, and novel legal solutions. This shift encourages more forward-thinking approaches to litigation and advisory work. However, innovation will ultimately depend on how willing legal professionals are to embrace and integrate AI ethically and strategically into their practices, preserving the profession’s judgment and human insight while leveraging technological advancement. Tradition and innovation can thus walk hand in hand.

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as a lawyer which programming language would I start with?

If I was to start programming or coding as a lawyer which programming language would I start with?
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language developed by Microsoft that is built into most Microsoft Office applications, such as Excel, Word, and Access. It is used to automate repetitive tasks, customize functionality, and create user-defined functions or forms.


Do you have a better suggestion?

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At what point do we trust artificial intelligence to fight our wars?

At what point do we trust artificial intelligence to fight our wars? When it makes fewer mistakes than a human soldier? When it follows orders without trauma, bias, or fear? Or is it when we’re too weary to risk our own blood? AI doesn’t sleep, doesn’t question, and doesn’t hesitate—qualities that make it both a perfect soldier and a terrifying one. Delegating lethal force to code strips war of its final trace of humanity. Can a machine weigh proportionality, justice, or mercy? Or does it reduce life and death to targets and algorithms? Trusting AI to wage war is a technological leap—but is it also our moral surrender? States may win wars with fewer human casualties, but at what cost to our conscience, sovereignty, or accountability? When war becomes a matter of programming, the enemy is no longer just the other side—it’s ourselves. Are we then prioritising efficiency over ethics?

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Computerised Stress Analysis for lawyers

Computerised stress analysis is the use of numerical models—most commonly the finite element method (FEM)—to predict how a part, structure, or tissue carries loads, deforms, and fails. In plain terms: you build a digital replica, tell it what materials and forces to expect, and the computer estimates stresses, strains, and safety margins before you cut metal or go to clinic.

What it involves

Geometry: a CAD model of the component or anatomy.

Materials: elastic/plastic properties (E, ν, yield strength), or viscoelastic/anisotropic data for composites and biological tissue.

Loads & restraints: forces, pressures, accelerations, temperature, contact, and boundary conditions.

Meshing: dividing the geometry into small elements so the solver can approximate the governing equations of continuum mechanics.

Solving & post-processing: compute fields (σ, ε, displacement), factors of safety, hot spots, and visualize contours, vectors, or animations.

Typical analyses

Linear static: small deflections, proportional stress–strain (quick “first pass”).

Nonlinear: large deformation, plasticity, contact, hyperelasticity (rubbers, vessels).

Dynamic: vibration (modal), transient shock, random response.

Thermal & coupled: heat transfer, thermo-mechanical stress.

Stability & life: buckling, fatigue/damage, fracture (SIF/CTOD).

Core methods and tools

FEM (standard): general-purpose structural analysis.

BEM / FDM / meshless: niche cases, acoustics, fracture fronts, etc.

Common platforms: Ansys, Abaqus, Nastran, COMSOL, SolidWorks Simulation—plus open-source (Code_Aster, CalculiX).

Why it’s valuable

Design faster, safer: explore “what-ifs” early, reduce prototypes, meet codes.

Insight: see loads you can’t easily measure; guide material choices and geometry.

Compliance & documentation: traceable inputs/outputs for engineering and regulatory files.

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Can the law explain the loss of MH370?


The reasoning in Rhesa Shipping Co SA v Edmunds [1985] 1 WLR 948 suggests that, without sufficient evidence, we cannot simply assume an explanation by eliminating other possibilities. Applying this to the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, we face a similar problem: (i) The aircraft disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014, and despite extensive searches, only limited debris has been recovered.(ii) Several theories exist, including mechanical failure, pilot action, hijacking, or some unknown catastrophic event.
However, no single theory has been conclusively proven on the balance of probabilities due to the lack of direct evidence.

Neither is Sherlock Holmes that helpful -“when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” A court must find facts based on positive proof, not just elimination.

Following Rhesa Shipping, a court would not be able to determine a definitive cause without clear proof. The mystery of MH370 remains unresolved because, much like the case, the available evidence does not support one theory strongly enough to meet the legal burden of proof.

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Updated product safety mandatory reporting guidance for suppliers now available

Today the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) published its updated Mandatory Reporting Guideline to help businesses understand and comply with their mandatory reporting obligations.

The updated guideline also recommends voluntary reporting of incidents that do not meet the mandatory reporting requirements, such as near misses, to help provide the ACCC with an early indication of product safety issues.

Businesses can now find new mandatory reporting information and tools on the Product Safety Australia website, including a:

  • quick guide that summarises obligations, making it easier for businesses to understand what they must do
  • template notice that suppliers may use to help inform staff about processes for mandatory reporting
  • questionnaire to help businesses ask relevant questions when reporting an incident
  • flowchart to determine if an incident must be reported

Why mandatory reporting is important to your business

Businesses must submit a mandatory report when they become aware that the use or foreseeable misuse of a consumer product they have supplied has caused, or may have caused, a death, serious injury or illness.

Mandatory reporting of deaths or serious injuries or illnesses from consumer products or product related services also helps the ACCC identify emerging hazards and risks, so action can be taken to prevent similar injuries, illnesses, or fatalities.

Mandatory reports are confidential and are not an admission of liability. However, if a business does not submit a mandatory report, where a report is required, they may be found guilty of a criminal offence and need to pay either $3,330 for an individual or $16,650 for a body corporate.

Your obligations

Businesses must submit a mandatory report within 2 days if they become aware that the use, or foreseeable misuse, of a consumer product they have supplied caused, or may have caused, a death or serious injury or illness. They can do this by using the ACCC online mandatory reporting form.

Businesses required to report

All businesses in the supply chain of a consumer good or product related service must submit a mandatory report. This includes businesses who install, import, manufacture, retail, clean, repair or assemble consumer goods.

Reporting to another agency

In some limited circumstances, businesses do not need to submit a mandatory report if they are required to report the incident to another specialist safety agency. This includes road vehicle accidents, deaths reported to a coroner, food-borne infectious diseases, and incidents involving agricultural and veterinary chemicals.

Voluntary reports

When a business assesses that a mandatory report is not required, we recommend that they submit a voluntary report to help the ACCC monitor potential safety risks and trends to prevent a death or serious injury or illness.

This includes reporting incidents that could have caused a death or serious injury or illness but, on this occasion, did not, for example:

  • a near miss
  • a serious injury or illness that developed slowly over time and is not acute
  • a pre-existing condition contributed to the death or serious injury or serious illness
  • the serious injury or illness was treated by someone who is not a medical doctor or a nurse, such as a dentist or physiotherapist
  • the incident was caused by the consumer good being misused in an unforeseeable way.

Advice for consumers

The ACCC encourages consumers to contact the business in the first instance to report a death or serious injury or illness caused by a consumer product. Consumers can also choose to report a product to the ACCC that they consider to be unsafe.

Background

This guidance material has been developed by the ACCC in response to stakeholder feedback seeking further guidance and practical examples to assist businesses to comply with their mandatory reporting obligations.

More information

Mandatory Reporting Guideline

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Pleading fraud – cause and effect is essential

It is trite law that “The material facts establishing the necessary causal link should be pleaded“.

Some guidance to the proper approach may be derived from the ordinary rule of pleading applicable in cases of fraud of which Lord Watson said in Dow Hager Lawrance v Lord Norreys (1890) 15 App Cas 210 at 221:

‘… The ordinary rule of pleading applicable to cases of fraud, … was thus expressed by Earle Selborne in Wallingford v Mutual Society (1880) 5 App Cas 685 at 697: “General allegations, however strong may be the words in which they are stated, are insufficient to amount to an averment of fraud of which any court ought to take notice.” It is not a sufficient compliance with the rule to state facts and circumstances which merely imply that the defendant, or someone for whose action he is responsible, did commit a fraud of some kind. There must be a probable, if not necessary, connection between the fraud averred and the injurious consequences which the plaintiff attributes to it; and if that connection is not sufficiently apparent from the particulars stated, it cannot be supplied by general averments. Facts and circumstances must in that case be set forth, and in every genuine claim are capable of being stated, leading to a reasonable inference that the fraud and the injuries complained of stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect.’

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Does the Trustee’s right of indemnity have priority over the right of beneficiaries in relation to assets?

In Chief Commissioner of Stamp Duties (NSW) v Buckle, the High Court held that a trustee’s right of indemnity out of trust assets was not an encumbrance upon the interests of the beneficiaries.

Until the trustee’s right of reimbursement or exoneration has been satisfied, it is impossible to say what the trust fund is, in the sense that it is impossible to identify assets which are held solely upon trusts binding the trustee in favour of the beneficiaries.

The right of a trustee to be indemnified has priority over the right of beneficiaries in relation to the assets.

This make sense to me and although the High Court didnt have the need to mention it, this analysis operates conceptually in the same way that a partner’s interest in a partnership isnt known until there is an account taken of the partnership assets.

The trustee’s right of indemnity is a fantastic aspect of the law of trusts and is the basis on which all contractual claims are made through the Trustee against the Trust assets. More on this later.

Reference: Chief Commissioner of Stamp Duties (NSW) v Buckle (1998) 192 CLR 226 at 245-247 [47]-[51].