OUR EXPERTISE
We look after the legal needs of corporate clients.
We bring a lot of smarts and a lot of experience
to that task. Here's a snapshot of what we can do.
02
COMPETITION AND CONSUMER LAW
Advertising review, misleading or deceptive conduct claims, cartel conduct, merger approval, ACCC investigations and prosecutions, authorisations, anti-competitive conduct claims, product liability, consumer guarantees, CCA compliance programs.
The Competition and Consumer Act is one of the longest, most complex and frequently amended pieces of legislation in Australia. For all businesses, it is unavoidable and not taking it seriously can seriously hurt. Like, the millions of dollars kind of hurt.
After tax, for most businesses this is your single biggest compliance risk. It is entirely manageable, but it is one of those areas where genuine expertise and experience comes in very handy.
We've been working in this field for a very long time. We've dealt with the ACCC about a billion times and we do know what makes them tick. We're aware of the hot button issues, which industries they're targeting and the kinds of conduct that are most likely to land you in the Federal Court being prosecuted. As with any compliance issue, profiling the risk level and balancing it sensibly against commercial imperatives is really critical and that's where we're focused.
We look after advertising copy review for a range of clients in different industries. Our turnaround is extremely fast, as it has to be, and most of our advices are shorter than a one line email.
The competition law part, or what Americans call anti-trust, does call for rather longer advice. It's extremely complex, but we are quite good at boiling it down to "Yes, you can do that" or "No, that's a very bad idea". We cover merger clearances, cartel conduct, exclusive dealing arrangements (such as third line forcing) and the other more exotic provisions. We prepare authorisation applications to the ACCC, and litigate when they get the answer wrong.
We also advise on consumer guarantees, warranties, product liability and industry codes. And we design and run compliance programs.
Finally, when it does go pear-shaped, we have acted in many ACCC investigations and run heaps of CCA-related litigation, ranging from cartel conduct in the food industry, through price fixing in the airline industry, to collusion in the online payments industry.
We're not saying we wrote the book on this stuff, because if we wrote a book it'd be far more interesting than the CCA, but we know it so well we could put it to music.
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LAW, DONE DIFFERENTLY