Julian Webb

@julianinoz.bsky.social

740 followers 580 following 330 posts

Law prof at UniMelb; lawyers/legal ethics, digital tech/reg, civil justice, empirical research. HREC Chair, Grampians Health. Recovering legal education geek.Trainee lavender grower, 💙art and books. Dja Dja Wurrung country #firstgen .. more

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Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · Jan 30

"Informative, inspiring and ambitious, Leading Works is a landmark work in legal ethics... The wide-ranging and thought-provoking territory that the book covers make it an invaluable resource..."

- Amy Salyzyn, JOTWELL (Jan. 29, 2025) (reviewing Webb (ed), Leading Works in Legal Ethics, Routledge).

Three copies of a book, 'Leading Works in Legal Ethics' fanned out on a wooden table

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 6d

Here's the last in the trilogy of papers that I've had come out in the last month, with my brilliant colleagues Vivi Tan and Jeannie Paterson, focussing on the importance of ODR design and governance for AI- enabled small consumer claims processes: www.unsw.edu.au/content/dam/...

www.unsw.edu.au

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 6d

Blue skies, but a (relatively) chilly Wellington today!

View across the parliament gardens to the 'Beehive' and Parliament House in Wellington, NZ

Reposted by Steve Peers, Julian Webb

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 6d

I don’t know how anyone can still talk about “the AI revolution” with a straight face. Reuters story about a railroad company that has sunk $300,000 into “developing AI products” and appears to have made…a chatbot that doesn’t work?
archive.is/2025.12.17-0...

Companies have also struggled with Al's lack of consistency.
Jeremy Nielsen, general manager at North American railroad service provider Cando Rail and Terminals, said the company recently tested an Al chatbot for employees to study internal safety reports and training materials.
But Cando ran into a surprising stumbling block: the models couldn't consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly 100-page document that lays out the safety standards for the industry.
Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules; other times they invented them from whole cloth. Al researchers say models often struggle to recall what appears in the middle of a long document.
Cando has dropped the project for now, but is testing other ideas. So far the company has spent $300,000 on developing
Al products.
"We all thought it'd be the easy button," Nielsen said. "And that's just not what happened."

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 6d

Law students' climate action succeeds before NZSC: www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Supreme Court finds government must consider climate change when offering oil and gas tenders

The country's highest court says climate change is "a pressing concern" when it comes to oil exploration - but Shane Jones says it must not triumph over energy security.

www.rnz.co.nz

Reposted by Reece Jones, Guntram B. Wolff, Richard S.J. Tol , and 58 more Reece Jones, Guntram B. Wolff, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Peter Thorne, Mor Naaman, Suzana J. Camargo, Steve Peers, Brad R. Humphreys, Evelyne de Leeuw, Jonathan Wolff, Mary Feeney, Olivier Corneille, Kai Arzheimer, Ian Hall, Henning Melber, Julian Webb, Patricia Aufderheide, Lesley A. Hall, Juan Cole, John Mullahy, Valerie Mueller, James Grimmelmann, Smith, Silvia Secchi, Robert Wolfe, Ariadne Vromen, Trevor A. Branch, Aileen McHarg, Margot C. Finn, Marina Costa Lobo, Howard Stevenson, Michael H. Whitworth, Melanie Simms, Stephen Jones, Miranda J. Lubbers, Maria Abreu, Jen Schneider, Anders Sundnes Løvlie, Michael Jones‐Correa, Aurélien Mondon, Kevin Manaugh, David Bartram, Yue Qian, Helen Schwenken, Henrik Skaug Sætra, Urška Demšar, Jeremy J. Schmidt, Judith Freedman, Hisham Zerriffi, Klaus Oschema, Daxton R. Stewart, Pádua Fernandes, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Lisa A. Kramer, Aidan O’Sullivan, Karin Wulf, Giulio Mattioli, Catherine Spooner, Clark Gray, David Spurrett

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 7d

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Reposted by Tom Clark, Julian Webb

Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 8d

I've been waiting to find out exactly how Trump was going to personally profit from the AI greed frenzy he has unleashed because there was no way he was *not* going to get a piece.

Now we know: a $6-billion merger of his failing media corp with an AI energy corp
www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025...

Trump Media to merge with nuclear fusion company to power AI

The all-stock deal comes amid growing energy needs for the tech sector.

www.aljazeera.com

Reposted by Julian Webb

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 8d

Lawyers Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader set to merge in record $3.6bn deal ft.trib.al/mRY40Bd

Lawyers Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader set to merge in record $3.6bn deal

Combination that would deliver 3,000-lawyer behemoth is the latest transatlantic merger

ft.trib.al

Reposted by Julian Webb

Liz Hicks @lizhicks.bsky.social · 9d

Thoughtful, critical analysis of the Australian media’s response so far to the #Bondi attack on Lamestream - notes much of the framing is coming from national / Federal politics journalists, distinct from the local, investigative reporters

open.spotify.com/episode/0syj...

open.spotify.com

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 10d

"The paper... differentiates between prohibited uses... permitted uses with disclosure..., and freely permitted uses.... [It] emphasizes that effective AI policies must be course-specific, enforceable, and focused on teaching students to use AI responsibly." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

AI Policies for Law Schools

This paper examines how generative AI, particularly large language models, challenges legal education across three dimensions of integrity-pedagogical, assessme

papers.ssrn.com

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 19d

New publication from my fabulous PhD candidate, Jing Qian....

Law, Technology and Humans @lawtechhum.bsky.social · 19d

🆕The use of algorithmic systems to identify suspected #WelfareFraud has led to concerns that governments are taking a ‘hurt first, fix later’ approach to the adoption of algorithmic systems #Robodebt #DutyOfCare
🔗 doi.org/10.5204/lthj...

Reposted by Julian Webb

Law, Technology and Humans @lawtechhum.bsky.social · 19d

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 27d

I seriously recommend browsing the latter collection if you can (sadly it's paywalled, except the Intro) - some really interesting and innovative work!

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 27d

Next up is a chapter I'm really excited to see out, as it finally develops a bunch of ideas I have had bubbling around for about a decade! In the fantastic Elgar Research Handbook on Sociological Approaches to Legal Ethics (Scott Cummings et al, eds, 2025) www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/res....

Shows opening para of Chapter 2: 'Legal ethics and the moral economy of legal practice', by Julian Webb, describing a moral economy approach as "one that emphasises the economy's embeddedness in the traditions and institutions of a community, rather than purely in the functioning of an autonomous market."

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 27d

Publishing Christmas has come early. I've been working on a bunch of papers over the last 18 months and more, and now, like the buses, they're all coming (out) at once! Starting with this in ANU Jnl of Law & Technology, vol 6(1)(2025) anujolt.org/article/1503...

First page of article titled 'The Evolution of Legal Knowledge Work in an Age of Brilliant(?) Technologies: From Robo-Lawyer to Digital Law Clerk' by Julian Webb and Jeannie Paterson

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 27d

Excellent set of posts from Anna Huggins, @frankpasquale.bsky.social & Alexandra Sinclair on Yee-Fui Ng's important new book 'Combatting the Code (CUP, 2025), on regulating government use of automated decision making: www.auspublaw.org/book-forum-y...

Book Forum: Yee-Fui Ng — Australian Public Law

www.auspublaw.org

Reposted by Julian Webb

Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · 27d

"GenAI is both unevenly distributed across the legal ecosystem, and currently over-hyped, operating chiefly as a kind of ‘digital law clerk’, substituting for and augmenting human work on only a limited range of lower-level diagnostic tasks.”
anujolt.org/article/1503...

The Evolution of Legal Knowledge Work in an Age of Brilliant(?) Technologies: from Robo-Lawyer to Digital Law Clerk | Published in ANU Journal of Law and Technology

By Jeannie Paterson, Julian Webb. Jeannie Paterson and Julian Webb develop a novel taxonomy of archetypes within the Australian legal profession through which emergent patterns and impacts of generati...

anujolt.org

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · 28d

Now this is surely one area where new tech - including AI - could be used to reduce cost? But issues around judicial editing and transparency would still need resolution. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

'I'm deeply troubled': Lawyers call out erroneous court transcripts

Obtaining court transcripts can cost thousands of dollars for a single day of proceedings, but the documents can contain errors, missing text, and even wrong attribution, frustrating legal practitione...

www.abc.net.au

Reposted by Julian Webb

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Nov 25

"As Mumbai sees increased energy demand from new datacentres, particularly from Amazon, the filthiest neighbourhood in one of India’s largest cities must keep its major coal plants"

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

‘It’s hell for us here’: Mumbai families suffer as datacentres keep the city hooked on coal

As Mumbai sees increased energy demand from new datacenters, particularly from Amazon, the filthiest neighbourhood in one of India’s largest cities must keep its major coal plants

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Julian Webb

The Conversation AUNZ @aunz.theconversation.com · Nov 24

Labor has pledged to pass long-awaited environment laws this week. But the current reforms leave Australia open to legal challenge.

Reposted by Julian Webb

Law, Technology and Humans @lawtechhum.bsky.social · Nov 24

From the latest issue - The legal profession offers its members a special identity in exchange for prolonged education and regulatory oversight. This article explores how the emergence of #GenAI challenges that promise and the profession’s meaning and value #LegalProfession
🔗 doi.org/10.5204/lthj...

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop , and 2 more Shannon Vallor, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Julian Webb, Mark Rice

Justin Brake @justinbrake.bsky.social · Nov 22

This is the 2nd time a major government report from Deloitte has been found to contain errors likely generated by AI.

First in Australia and now, as The Independent has confirmed, in a major healthcare policy paper for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli #AI #deloitte

The Independent @independentnl.bsky.social · Nov 22

A major healthcare policy paper commissioned by @govnl.bsky.social government from Deloitte at a cost of $1.6 million, cites research papers that don’t exist, making it the second major government policy paper called into question in as many months. #nlpoli #AI
theindependent.ca/news/lji/maj...

Major N.L. healthcare report contains errors likely generated by A.I. – The Independent

$1.6 million Health Human Resources Plan from Deloitte cites research papers that don’t exist, making it the second major government policy paper called into question in as many months

theindependent.ca

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · Nov 21

Judges have become ‘human filters’ as AI in Australian courts reaches ‘unsustainable phase’, chief justice says www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...

Judges have become ‘human filters’ as AI in Australian courts reaches ‘unsustainable phase’, chief justice says

Stephen Gageler warns the speed of AI’s development could be outstripping people’s ability to ‘comprehend its potential risks and rewards’

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Julian Webb, Lesley A. Hall

Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · Nov 21

There is one more post to be written here, about how AI is now often an austerity technology, inserted into a human process to compensate for the fact that there is just not enough time and money, and many workers are expected to do more and more with less and less.

Reposted by Julian Webb

The Australia Institute @australiainstitute.org.au · Nov 20

"The fossil fuel lobby has learned from the tobacco industry's tactics. It knows that denying manmade climate change is no longer credible.

"The mission is simply to delay climate action...to continue to make profits from the damage they do."

- The Hon. Mike Rann AC CNZM #auspol

Reposted by Julian Webb

A/Prof Narrelle Morris @narrellemorris.bsky.social · Nov 20

Supreme Court of Western Australia has finally issued its guidelines to litigants and practitioners on the use of Gen AI. Very similar to the general principles approach in Vic/Qld with shades of NSW. It’s not a practice note. Nothing directed to judges, which is a shame. See my recent article.

Julian Webb @julianinoz.bsky.social · Nov 17

What perfect album came out the year you turned 16? This is mine... *chef's kiss* open.spotify.com/album/4WD4ps...

Reposted by Julian Webb

Pacific Standard 🚜🌻☂️ @pacstandardtw.bsky.social · Nov 15

"Anthropic said, with “high confidence,” it identified the threat actor as a Chinese state-sponsored group that successfully manipulated its Claude Code tool into attempting to infiltrate about 30 global... tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies."