This Week in Family Law

Bonus: What's Up? The last two months in family law

• LEAP Family Law • Season 2

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0:00 | 15:48

In this bonus episode of This Week in Family Law, we cover the all the latest updates in Australian family law that occurred during our break, including State Budgets and their impact of their respective courts, the NSW Supreme Court's new Instagram account, and all the latest on AI in Family Law.



Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
0:34 - What's Up? - Updates in Family Law for this week



Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for general information and discussion purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and should not be relied on as such. The views expressed are general in nature and may not apply to your specific circumstances. You should seek independent legal advice before acting on any information discussed.



About the podcast:
This Week in Family Law is the go-to podcast for busy Australian family lawyers looking to stay updated without the overwhelm. Whether you’re a family lawyer in Australia, a practitioner working towards CPD, or simply interested in family law, this podcast delivers clear, practical insights in a bite-sized format. Subscribe to stay up to date with the latest developments in Australian family law. New episodes drop every Monday.



Topics covered in this episode:
- Is AI Eroding the Legal Apprenticeship?
- The Supreme Court of NSW Is Now on Instagram
- NSW LPAB Interim Report on PLT Reform
- LIV: Family Law Court Program Offers an Insider's Perspective
- FCFCOA Recruiting a Director of AI Innovation and Transformation
- Courts 'Left Behind' in the NSW Budget (24 June)
- QLS Welcomes Queensland Budget Boost (23 June)
- Law Society SA: 'Justice Denied' in the State Budget (5 June)
- Foundation to Boost Indigenous Legal Practitioners (9 July)
- QLS Campaign on AI-Generated 'Legal Advice'
- LIV: How Good Supervision Supports a Thriving Profession
- LIV: Top AI Pitfalls in Law and How to Avoid Them




Links:

Is AI Eroding the Legal Apprenticeship?
https://lsj.com.au/articles/is-ai-eroding-the-legal-apprenticeship/


The Supreme Court of NSW Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/nswsupremecourt/?hl=en


NSW LPAB Interim Report on PLT Reform
https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/media/Interim-Report-PLT-20260313.pdf


LIV: Family Law Court Program Offers an Insider's Perspective
https://www.liv.asn.au/web/law_institute_journal_and_news/web/lij/year/2026/07july/family-law-court-program-offers-insiders-perspective.aspx


FCFCOA Recruiting a Director of AI Innovation and Transformation
https://fcajobs.nga.net.au/cp/index.cfm?event=jobs.checkJobDetailsNewApplication&returnToEvent=jobs.listJobs&jobid=933349FE-E6B6-B961-651E-ED1FA092A08D&CurATC=EXT&CurBID=677CD450-FC33-84A3-A68E-E3BF25CFF5ED&JobListID=D88C9D6E-258B-7949-72C3-E3BF25DC4B1B&jobsListKey=f37d3b12-d436-41ab-a927-c989beaf5291&persistVariables=CurATC,CurBID,JobListID,jobsListKey,JobID&lid=24342500044&rmuh=35FB2755B43F18BF1C54843D1D41B3F9ABF21AB3


Courts 'Left Behind' in the NSW Budget (24 June)
https://www.lawsociety.com.au/courts-left-behind-nsw-budget-infrastructure-bonanza


QLS Welcomes Queensland Budget Boost (23 June)
https://www.qls.com.au/news-media-advocacy/qls-welcomes-budget-boost


Law Society SA: 'Justice Denied' in the State Budget (5 June)
https://www.lawsocietysa.asn.au/site/news-media-and-advocacy/media-releases/Justice-denied-in-State-Budget.aspx?name=Justice-denied-in-State-Budget


Foundation to Boost Indigenous Legal Practitioners (9 July)
https://www.lawsociety.com.au/publications-and-resources/news-media-releases/foundation-boost-indigenous-legal-practitioners


QLS Campaign on AI-Generated 'Legal Advice'
https://www.qlsproctor.com.au/2026/05/qls-launches-campaign-to-address-risks-of-ai-generated-legal-advice/


LIV: How Good Supervision Supports a Thriving Profession
https://www.liv.asn.au/web/law_institute_journal_and_news/web/lij/year/2026/06june/how-good-supervision-can-support-a-thriving-legal-profession.aspx


LIV: Top AI Pitfalls in Law and How to Avoid Them
https://www.liv.asn.au/web/law_institute_journal_and_news/web/lij/year/2026/05may/strategic-insights-for-safe-use-of-ai-legal-forum-2026.aspx





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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to a bonus episode of This Week in Family Law, the go-to podcast for busy Australian family lawyers who want to stay updated without the overwhelm. In this episode, we're going to be providing you with updates that happened over the break. With me today is Antonia Cacapado. Antonia, are you excited about season two?

SPEAKER_00

I am. We have some really exciting episodes lined up.

SPEAKER_01

We definitely do. Yes. I'm very excited. It's great to be back after a bit of a break.

SPEAKER_00

I agree. So let's get into it. What's up, Brendan?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so first up, we have a Law Society Journal article that discusses whether or not AI is actually quietly dismantling the traditional training and apprenticeship model for young lawyers. So the routine grunt work that junior lawyers once sort of cut their teeth on and earn their stripes on being things like document review, first pass research, first drafts, that's getting increasingly done by AI. And the worry amongst the profession and people who are conducting this research is that juniors are now learning by fixing the machine or the AI's mistakes rather than building those skills from ground up, which is what they traditionally did. So that's a very different kind of training that junior lawyers are now going through.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it'll just keep changing as AI continues. So we'll have to see what ends up happening there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I agree. And definitely it's it's it's different thinking back to how we would have learned how to do things, you know, the traditional way. Um but I think that's just a part of the change in technology and the shift the way people do things. Like if you think about how many moons ago would not have been email, would have been sending things by fax or post. Yeah. Same sort of thing. You pick up new skills and how to actually use online platforms, you know, attend things, attend court hearings virtually and so on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. And the junior lows will still need to know what to pick up on the like for the mistakes in the AI. So they're still learning that way. I think it would just be a different way of them learning. That's right, different basics.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. How about you, Antonia? What's up from your end?

SPEAKER_00

Well, a quick one I have is that the Supreme Court of New South Wales is now on Instagram. So it's a way for uh it's part of the broader push by courts to engage in the public, shed light on what happens in the courtroom, and supports open justice.

SPEAKER_01

That's great. So I mean I think a lot of people are slowly actually acknowledging that in that not Instagram, sorry, the uh social media platforms out there are actually a great avenue to actually reach a broader audience. So it's actually interesting to see the courts themselves actually opening up an Instagram account.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I know. It's something that you wouldn't have thought you'd see.

SPEAKER_01

Certainly not five or ten years ago. Definitely not. All right. So the next one, the next update from Mayan is that the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia is recruiting an experienced, innovative leader in a newly created role called the Director of AI Innovation and Transformation. And this position will lead the court's AI transformation program, driving the responsible, ethical, and secure adoption of AI to improve accessibility, service quality, operational efficiency, and safety across the courts, which I think is actually a great concrete sign that the court's actually putting AI strategy at a senior leadership level, not just at a junior sort of entry-level position and not just talking about it. And it sounds like from the job description that the initial priorities include things like developing a multilingual chatbot capability for court users. So that's like a real sort of access to justice move right here. And acknowledging that there's a broader uh court user base than the traditional English-speaking person. Um and also AI-enabled automation of high-volume registry and administrative processes tied to migration applications, which again is an area where often the people who are using the court or coming to the court are not from an English-speaking background.

SPEAKER_00

Or self-represented. That's right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

So again, this whole access to justice push being driven by AI, which I think is fantastic. And it sounds like the role can be based in any Australian capital city. So it's not just limited to one place. So I guess if any listeners are involved, um we can put a link to the job description in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. That sounds perfect. So one of the updates I saw was that the New South Wales Legal Profession Admission Board released its interim report on reform on practical legal training. The proposal embeds foundational practical skills into law degrees, adds a compressed, largely face-to-face pre-admission POT course, which is around three to four weeks, and introduces a new post-admission legal training stream, which is not to be confused with the CPD, but rather involves assessment and includes specialist modules. There's an emphasis on face-to-face teaching, mandated First Nations content, and a structured work structure, uh sorry, a structured work experience requirement. The report uses a family law example of the proposed new post-admission legal training stream, which is developed by a group of practitioners and is delivered over four separate days across a newly admitted lawyer's first two years. So I think that would be a really good push on getting some more legal training, more advocacy kind of face-to-face rather than what we're used to, where it was one week in and then the rest online.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I remember doing the rest online part and doing a whole day on Zoom was actually really difficult to focus. You sort of turn off your brain by, I guess, the half halfway through the day because it's just so draining. Yeah. And I think a lot of things, especially with law, you can't learn it from a textbook. And you might have said that many, many times. But it's one of those things where like you have to do it practically, you have to do it for real, to actually understand how to do it properly.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and I hopefully think that um all of these new changes that are coming into play will hopefully help young lawyers uh get up to speed a lot quicker and with uh a stronger skill set.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01

So the next update from my end is that the Queensland Law Society recently launched a public education campaign that says for real legal advice, ask a solicitor on its you and the law platform, warning people against substituting AI tools and free online resources for professional legal advice. And very cleverly, I think it uses AI-generated videos to depict everyday legal scenarios and the risks of actually relying on that informal or unverified information, which I think is actually quite clever.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think that's very important. You see a lot of people thinking they can do what they need to do as a lawyer now because they've got AI, but there's limitations and hallucinations and there's a lot of risk with it. So putting that to the broader public is really important.

SPEAKER_01

Especially because a lot of the foundations behind a lot of these AI or free online resources is actually based on the US system, which a lot of it, if not most of it, does not actually apply here in Australia. No. So often, many times you do see self-represented litigants or just your average person turning to these resources, not knowing the difference between the two systems. Exactly. And then, you know, coming to you for the first time, coming into your office and seeing you thinking they're an expert when in reality they've just read a whole bunch of stuff that does not apply to them.

SPEAKER_00

100%. Yeah. One of my updates is going to the New South Wales budget. So after the budget was released in June, the Law Society of New South Wales released an article discussing how the budget left the state's courts behind, allocating them only $3 million to modernize their court technology against the $108.8 million handed to the New South Wales police force for their new technology upgrades. The President welcomed some measures such as enhancements to the Downing Centre, extra resources for the Industrial Relations Commission and Land Environment Court, and investment in integrity agencies, but warned that regional courthouses urgently need upgrades such as safe rooms for victims of violent crime or more audiovisual link facilities. So we'll see how this all plays out in the next year. But um, it's looking like we did need a lot more in that budget.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, looking at three million versus 180 million is actually a massive difference. And, you know, working in tech, I can tell you it's definitely not cheap to update systems. I know the courts, especially the larger registries, did a massive overhaul when it came time to actually move everything online during the COVID period. But there's still a long way to go to make sure that, like you said, regional courthouses or or smaller registries actually have access to that same level of technology.

SPEAKER_00

You don't want them getting um forgotten or falling behind.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Yeah. Um in a bit of a contrast, actually, the Queensland Law Society welcomed the Queensland 2026-2027 budget, um, justice investment. Um highlights include things such as 11 million over five years for additional Supreme and District Court judges, uh, 29.3 million over four years for judges and judicial support, 22.1 million over four years for digital court systems, which is significantly more than just the entirety of what New South Wales seems to be getting. Um, 8.6 million in the 2026-2027 year for legal aid Queensland, six million over four years for courthouse security, 10.6 million over four years for prosecution services, and 14.8 million over three years for the children's courts, plus 250 million child protection for the Child Protection Commission, and 186.6 million to begin responding to the Child Safety Commission of Inquiry. So that's quite a lot of figures and quite a lot of numbers there. But just looking at that uh very briefly, it does look like that Queensland is seeing a much more positive investment into their legal system, which is uh in stark contrast to what we just saw with New South Wales.

SPEAKER_00

I also saw that um South Australia felt like justice was denied in their state budget as well. So an article published by the Law Society of South Australia said that it was failing them by they needed um urgent funds for court infrastructure for the New South Wales, sorry, for the new Supreme Court criminal courtrooms, safe interview rooms, remedial work, and trauma-informed redesign of the youth court. They are also introducing new judicial mediation fees from 1 July, so they're in place now, where it's $2,000 in the Supreme Court and $1,500 in the district court, where mediation was previously free. So that's a change as well. The society states that they were disappointed by the lack of new prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation measures to reduce offending, with law and order spending limited largely to prison upgrades and extra police, and it renewed calls for a review of the Adelaide Remand Center. So again, they're not too happy there.

SPEAKER_01

Sounds like police are getting the line share of that money as well. So I wonder I wonder what's driving these differences in um the allocation of budgets. I wonder what's behind all that.

SPEAKER_00

We'll have to see how it all plays out.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely. Now, on a different note, looking at Victoria now, the Law Institute of Victoria published an article on the 20th of May where it's argued that lawyers need a minimum viable understanding of AI to recognize its limitations and also understand how they and their clients can use it safely and effectively. Now, I know we've actually talked about something similar on previous episodes, the podcast before, but it's interesting to see that other people are also sharing the same opinion. And it's canvassed in this article the challenges of AI in legal practice, the difficulty of actually regulating the fast-moving technology, cautioning against both uncritical adoption and blanket avoidance. And the underlying message is that competence with AI is actually becoming a part of a lawyer's professional responsibility, requiring enough literacy to deploy the tools appropriately while safeguarding accuracy, confidentiality, and also the client's interests. And I think this is actually really interesting because over in the US, the Bar Association has actually formally acknowledged that technical tech sorry, competence with technology is actually one of the duties a solicitor or a lawyer over there has to actually uphold in order to be considered competent or actually doing their job competently. So there's formal recognition there. And I think there's some of that coming over to here now. I like how they say um blanket avoidance is you know um It's not ideal, which I think we see we uh there might be a bit of a response to uh I think the New South Wales Supreme Court's position, um, which we saw uh m some some time ago.

SPEAKER_00

Well practitioners just can't put their head in the sand, they're gonna actually have to, you know, start to adopt AI and make it work for them and yeah, be across all the technology.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Or at least to the level where they understand where it can actually be misused or uh just aware of it. That's right, exactly. Otherwise they're gonna have no clue when they're faced with that challenge.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I also have an article from the Law Institute of Victoria, and they're running a series of online CPD sessions where judicial registrars give family lawyers and general practitioners who handle family law matters firsthand insight into court processes. So all sessions are free, and we'll put a link in the show notes where you can find out more and register for upcoming sessions.

SPEAKER_01

Having this sort of again free access to uh training and CPD style events. Straight from the court is yeah, I mean, of course, thinking back to practice, some would have been able to attend this. Um I might actually still attend anyway, because uh I love to hear more from the court at all times. But um, that's definitely a step in the right direction, I think.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely. We also found from the Law Society of New South Wales they've launched the Indigenous Solicitors Foundation. So this is to help First Nations law graduates make the transition into practice. The article discusses how a number of First Nations solicitors in New South Wales fell. So we had 477 in 2014, and in 2025, it's 350. So the ISF is designed to help cover barriers such as practical legal training fees, IT equipment, textbooks, and interview attire. The launch coincided with the Law Society's event honoring NADOC Week, and they're encouraging donors and confirm donations are tax deductible. They also thanked Gilbert and Tobin for for providing significant pro bono work in setting up the foundation.

SPEAKER_01

That's great news. That's great to hear it's always good to have that support, especially for First Nations peoples. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00

The last update I have is an article from the Law Society of Victoria, and they've discussed a report from the Center for the Future of the Legal Profession, which warns that junior lawyers are often left to sink or swim at the start of their careers, which increases the risk of low confidence, burnout, and attrition. It explores making supervision work for everyone, the difference between small and large firms, the added complications created by hybrid and remote working, and it also considers supervision in the age of AI. I found it a really interesting read, and I think we should put it in the show notes for the listeners to have a look at.

SPEAKER_01

I agree. And again, that recognition that that support and training is necessary for early career or younger lawyers, it's very important. That's right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, to build on, otherwise they do feel like they're not supported and that's right.

SPEAKER_01

Especially now, as you mentioned, things like hybrid working arrangements, remote working arrangements, and of course the age of AI, it's rapidly changing the way lawyers traditionally learn and the skills they pick up, just like we were speaking about earlier in this episode. Um, that's all very important for there to be uh some level of recognition of.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's all the updates we have today. Thank you, Antonia. We've loved being in your ears this week. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode. If you have any questions or feedback, you can reach us by email or on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Stay tuned for next week's episode. New episodes drop every Monday.