Synergy Law
Supporting Government to become 'future ready', partnering with clients to achieve legally defensible outcomes.
By leaning into complex and challenging issues, we can find options and solutions to support legally defensible outcomes and provide confidence for the commonwealth.
Synergy Law is a Synergy Group integrated legal offering, specialising in Government law and legal advisory services. Synergy Law as a capability, and an added service line, enables Synergy Group to provide clients integrated end to end advisory services and solutions which are legally assured and defensible. Synergy Law also provides Synergy Group the additional capability to look at ways to ‘lean into’ future legal issues such as: cyber security, ICT and infrastructure security, emerging energy resources, climate law, supply chain management, data sharing and information law, to support Government operations becoming ‘future ready’.
Synergy Law not only provides an integrated legal service but added depth of experience through having worked in, and for, Government on complex legal, policy and program matters. We know our market, we know our clients, we understand what you need. We will lean in, work beside you, and help you achieve your outcomes.
Meet the team
From start to finish we listen and seek to understand and deliver impact, together, in partnership.
How we think
With views on what matter and knowledge to share. We pride ourselves in collaborating. Get to know us better.
Insight
Seeing the Mountains for the Clouds
Back in the mists of time, 2007 to be precise, the Commonwealth Ombudsman issued an incredibly useful Fact Sheet – Ten Principles for Good Administration. The Ombudsman’s ‘Ten Commandments’ contain evergreen principles about good administration that are as useful today, if not more so. And that’s not because of the advent of AI and automated decision-making. These Ten Commandments not only underpin good decision-making, but they are also key ‘principles’ that govern any ‘rules’ that are set by humans – and especially if there is ever a ‘machine in the loop.’
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Insight
Legal bot building
AI bots are all the craze these days. So, jumping on the trend, I decided to create my own. I started with good intentions – to build a bot that would analyse event planning and provide a series of recommendations based on the Australian Government’s Good Practice Guidelines for Engaging with People with Disability (Good Practice Guidelines). The goal? To provide practical advice on engaging with people with a disability in an inclusive, respectful and appropriate way.
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Insight
AI, National Security, Energy & Robert DeNiro
Robert DeNiro, who recently starred in a limited-edition Netflix series ‘Zero Day.’ DeNiro played the ageing, one-term ex-American President, recruited by the (fictional) sitting President to track down conspirators responsible for the so-called ‘Zero Day’ cyberattack that disabled every IT system in America for exactly one minute.
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Insight
Australia’s Information Commissioner v Medibank: Cybersecurity Lessons-for-All
Data breaches – in this day and age, who hasn’t been on the wrong side of one? Their sheer frequency, from large-scale attacks like Optus and Medibank, to the now-regular drip of phone notifications for compromised passwords, has created a sense of grim normality. Arguably, data breaches are ‘the norm’ – if you consider that 9.7 million people (more than one in three Australians) had their personal data exposed in the Medibank breach. But those facts should not breed complacency, especially for organisations that handle personal information as part of their day-to-day operations. It is crucial for these organisations to understand and actively implement all ‘reasonable steps,’ including cybersecurity measures, to protect Australians’ personal data.
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Insight
Beyond Face Value – Bunnings and the Use of Facial Recognition Technology
For those of us with an interest in spy and thriller movies where they track down people in near real time using facial recognition technology (FRT), Australia’s Privacy Commissioner brought that issue ‘home’ in a landmark determination against much-loved Aussie home and hardware store, Bunnings Group. According to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), Bunnings had not received meaningful consent to use FRT so as to compare hundreds of thousands of customers’ images of individuals who’d been observed stealing or had been violent or threatening towards staff.
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Insight
If the fox is in the henhouse, how do you protect the coop's 'ethical walls'?
Government has, understandably, sought to ensure service providers act ethically and do not engage in practices that can be considered unethical. That raises the ethical question – can and should consultants working within an agency use information gleaned from that agency? Stated another way, are we letting the foxes have the run of the chicken coop? The simple answer to that question is – there is no simple answer to that question.
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