Don’t miss these key updates from inside Lexis Advance

Civil Procedure
Publication of new uniform civil procedure rules

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

The new Uniform Civil Rules 2020 commenced 18 May 2020. The landmark legislation for the first time introduces uniform rules for the SA Supreme, District and Magistrates Courts, and have been designed by the Rules Committee to coincide and integrate with the launch in the SA courts of electronic filing. Civil Procedure South Australia has been updated to incorporate the new Rules, with an initial chapter of commentary and guidance from author and member of the Rules Committee Master Peter Norman. Annotations to the new Rules will be added progressively as the first wave of cases are decided under them, and as the authors work through the annotations to the 2006 Rules and carry them over as appropriate.

Civil Procedure and Arbitration
Expansion of WA title to include arbitration rules

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Authoritative analytical work Civil Procedure Western Australia will soon be expanding to include coverage of and annotations to the Supreme Court (Arbitration) Rules 2016. Over the years since their commencement these Rules have seen increased usage in WA as arbitration becomes an established part of dispute resolution, in both domestic and international contexts. General Editor Judge Gething of the WA District Court will oversee the expansion and the authorship of commentary for these Rules.

Employment and Workplace
Decision on meaning of casual employee under the Fair Work Act: WorkPac Pty Ltd v Rossato

FEDERAL

WorkPac Pty Ltd v Rossato is a recent decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia examining the definition of a casual employee under the Fair Work Act 2009. The case turned on an analysis of the nature of the relationship between employer and employee, which was found to include essential features of a full-time employment arrangement. Workplace Law: Fair Work has been updated with leading commentary on this case and its treatment of established authority in WorkPac Pty Ltd v Skene.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) has reached the significant milestone of 10 years in operation and is the first Australian labour law regime to endure so long since the first moves away from conciliation and arbitration in the late 1980s.

The latest edition of Australian Journal of Labour Law is a Special Edition which brings together expert analyses of aspects of the Act that have received relatively little scholarly attention, such as the National Employment Standards, modern awards and union right of entry, as well as key issues including wages and agreement-making, enforcement of the Act and individual protections, and the overall state of Australian unions.

Family Law
Special edition on post-separation financial abuse

FEDERAL

Australian Journal of Family Law has released a comprehensive Special Edition which focuses on post-separation financial abuse, broadly defined, in the Australian family law context, with a short foray across the Tasman for a New Zealand perspective.

Occupational Regulation
QCAT occupational regulation for health practitioners

QUEENSLAND

Keeping pace with the continually expanding jurisdiction of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, our dedicated publication QCAT Practice and Procedure has been expanded to include a new chapter on occupational regulation for health practitioners. One of a series of 'matter type' chapters, the chapter provides practical and concise guidance on running an occupational regulation matter through the Tribunal, including a procedural guide and coverage of the relevant law.

LexisNexis Practical Guidance updates –inside Lexis Advance

Practical Guidance Practice Area Round-ups

Fortnightly newsletters, our new Practice Area Round-ups are a great way to stay abreast of topic area news and highlights, straight to your inbox. They cover the latest developments in practice as well as key calendar dates.

Now available for Banking & Finance; Corporations; Cybersecurity, Data Protection & Privacy; Employment; and Intellectual Property. And coming in September: Competition; Mergers & Acquisitions; and Property.

REGISTER HERE for fortnightly updates

Practice area highlights

• PG Banking & Finance – New checklists and guidance on how to conduct VOI checks for property financing transactions remotely during COVID-19 pandemic. New guidance on LIBOR transition. New guidance on product intervention orders. New precedents including drafting notes to assist practitioners during negotiations.
• PG Business – New precedents on franchising, significant enhancements to shareholder agreement precedents.
• PG Competition – New toolkit on Consumer Data Rights, assisting practitioners’ understanding of this emerging area impacting key industries (e.g. banking, energy, telecoms). New guidance and checklists on the laws associated with contracts containing most favoured nations clauses, structuring joint venture arrangements to comply with competition law and issues of dual listed companies.
• PG Consumer - New and updated guidance on gift cards, receipts and proof of purchase, Consumer Data Right regime, Banking Code of Practice, ASIC product intervention power for consumer financial products, design and distribution obligations for consumer financial products, excessive payment surcharges and ACCC investigative powers. New consumer credit tools.
• PG Corporations – New guidance on product intervention orders, and deregistration and reinstatement. New Modern Slavery content outlining requirements all corporate lawyers need to know. New guidance on requirements for directors who have an interest in a decision. New precedents (Register of members; Consent to become an initial member) augmenting existing resources for incorporating a company. New checklists: Calling a meeting of the board of directors; Post-registration matters for a company; Steps for a whitewash process.
• PG Cybersecurity, Data Protection & Privacy – new checklists on Data Security: (i) Determining applicable sources of legal obligations for data security; (ii) Issues to consider when planning an organisation’s response to a data security breach; (iii) De-identification of personal information
• PG Employment – New guidance and checklists on JobKeeper for casuals, misclassification of casuals leading to significant underpayments and standing down workforce where Jobkeeper is not available. New clause precedent for pre-conditions, assisting in new-hire relationships and meeting conditions such as the right to work. New guidance, precedents and checklists on modern slavery. New white-label training materials for in-house counsel and governance, risk & compliance specialists to deliver to staff on workplace issues, starting with modern slavery and wage theft (underpayments).
• PG Family – New subtopic on bankruptcy in family law matters and new guidance on appeals procedure.
• PG Governance – New precedents covering performance of functions of board and management. New subtopic on Corporate Governance when dealing with overseas companies.
• PG Insolvency – New guidance and tools covering options for directors of companies in financial distress, providing practitioners with information on the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. New precedents covering various insolvency issues.
• PG Intellectual Property – New guidance on Brexit and IP. Coverage of Protecting and Registering IP has been restructured to make it easier for practitioners to find what they’re looking for. New guidance on joint authorship.
• PG Mergers & Acquisitions – new guidance on the proposed major reforms to Australia’s foreign investment regime as well as on e-signing and updates to checklist for the use of electronic signatures under the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth).
• PG Personal Injury NSW – Substantial new topic dealing with the Comcare scheme. New guidance on intentional torts, cruise ship claims, civil aviation claims and prisoner claims.
• PG Personal Injury Qld - New topic on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth) and the Comcare scheme.
• PG Personal Injury Vic - New topic on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth) and the Comcare scheme.
• PG Property – New guidance for practitioners on the law and procedures for rectifying, varying and surrendering leases. New tools, checklists and guidance on signing and witnessing property documents during the COVID-19 pandemic. New commercial and retail leasing precedents, with drafting notes and guidance for practitioners on alternate clause wording.
• PG Succession – New guidance and checklists for remote witnessing of documents during COVID-19 pandemic. Expanded elder law topic, including new guidance on voluntary assisted dying legislation in Victoria and Western Australia.
• PG Tax – New guidance on how the Jobkeeper schemes operate and how to subscribe to the schemes.

Recent updates to the Lexis Advance^® Platform

New ‘Snapshot’ view for International Legislation Search Results

In August 2020 the International Snapshot Results View was implemented for Legislation, allowing easy comparison of instruments across multiple countries. To access the new results view, users can select ‘International Snapshot View’ from the ‘Legislation’ tab of the Quick Find pod on the Lexis Advance home page.

This enhancement follows positive responses to the release of the International Snapshot View for cases in June 2020. Customers with subscriptions in more than one country are now able to compare the top 3 results from those jurisdictions in a single view. The countries are displayed in order of number of results returned. To access the full palette of post-search filtering tools, the user can click through to see all results from that country.

Visit the Lexis Advance Platform Enhancements page for more information.

Lexis Red^® Updates

Recent Updates – Lexis Red 3.14

Lexis Red is a digital platform through which you can access your preferred legal content. Through the app you can browse, search, share, and annotate faster than before. Lexis Red is available on iPad, Android tablets, Windows 10 and Macintosh desktops, and laptops.

In our upcoming release (Lexis Red 3.14), the team has focused on introducing a new legislative quick find functionality that has been widely sought by our customers. Labelled Go To Provision, users will be able to jump straight to a specific section or other provision in any legislative instrument contained in their loose-leaf services, saving valuable time and effort – especially in a fast-paced court environment.

Image: Mock-up of Legislative Quick Find feature for iPad, improving the searchability of legislative provisions in loose-leaf materials.

Additionally, 100 LexisNexis practitioner books have been made available on Lexis Red so far in 2020, and approximately 20 more titles will be added this year. Click here to see the book release plan (Jan – Dec 2020).

If you would like to learn more about Lexis Red, please contact your Relationship Manager.

Lexis^® Draft Updates

A new release of Lexis Draft (v10.4) is now available to download and install via our Downloads Page. The latest version includes WordRake v3.9 (with new editing algorithms and thousands of enhancements to existing algorithms for greater accuracy), and support for the new series of the Queensland Reports.

Our newest version is the result of customer feedback and a focus on improving performance, consistency and user experience. Please review our updated Technical Requirements and Installation Guide before installing.

Lexis Draft gives legal practitioners peace of mind that their documents are accurate, complete and consistent, validating their citations and proofreading their work within Microsoft Word and Outlook:

• Accurate Citations & Research – Review cited cases and legislations, easily accessing deeper research via Lexis Advance, CaseBase® & LawNow® without leaving your document or interrupting your concentration.
• Fast, Efficient Proofreading – Quickly scan documents for term risks, cross-references, formatting errors, details missed during a long negotiation, or unwanted residual information from repurposed documents.
• Simple, Collaborative Editing – Easily mark and share errors for colleagues when there is more than one contributor to a document.
• Consistent Language Review – Improve the clarity and readability of your document, keeping your writing polished, concise, and consistent when multiple staff are editing.
• Seamless Document Conversion – PDF to Word conversion made easy.

For further information on the enhancements and bug fixes in this release, please review our Release Notes.

If you would like training or a refresher session for your team on Lexis Draft, simply contact your Relationship Manager.

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