A computing academic at Macquarie University has won a casual conversion dispute at the Fair Work Commission after using multiple paid AI agents to build his case without a lawyer. The ruling marks the first test of the federal government's "employee choice pathway" reforms passed in 2024, and the self-represented applicant's success has reignited debate about whether AI can replace legal professionals.
Gregory Baker had been teaching computer science over consecutive semesters from 2023 to 2025. In November 2025, he notified the university that he believed his work no longer met the requirements of casual employment. Macquarie University declined the request, and Baker lodged a dispute at the Fair Work Commission in December 2025. When the parties could not reach agreement, the case went to arbitration on May 12. The commission handed down its decision last Wednesday.
How AI tools shaped the case
Baker told the Australian Financial Review that an AI tool first alerted him to the possibility of converting his role from casual to permanent part-time. He then used multiple paid AI agents, including OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro, to assemble his case, follow up references, and anticipate the university's counterarguments. The Review described it as "the first known successful use of technology by a self-represented person in the legal arena."
Baker's IT background and expertise managing AI agents set this case apart. Details in the commission's decision suggest he kept his legal argument narrowly focused on teaching he had done in one particular unit. Less expert users of AI in court often produce sprawling arguments that include weak, exaggerated, and nonsense claims. Baker's dispute was also narrow, limited to the application of a casual conversion law that had not yet been tested. The Fair Work Commission, unlike a formal court, is designed to be user-friendly and enable workers to bring claims without a lawyer.
The other side of AI in legal proceedings
Elsewhere, generative AI in legal settings is attracting attention for less positive reasons. Most concern centres on damage caused by inaccuracies, hallucinations, and low-quality AI-generated content, along with questions about how courts and tribunals should respond. By making it easier to put a case together, AI has removed traditional access barriers for some litigants. But while case numbers are going up, case precision and quality is going down, making it harder to manage disputes to resolution.
Courts and tribunals are struggling with the volume. At the Fair Work Commission alone, workload has reportedly increased by 70% over three years. New challenges continue to emerge, including reports from overseas jurisdictions that litigants and lawyers are embedding prompts in digital documents - a technique called "prompt injection" - to manipulate AI-based review systems some courts use to process documents.
A narrow but real opportunity
Baker's example shows that, used well, AI tools can help people with narrow legal disputes and strong digital skills achieve successful resolutions at low cost. This has implications for AI for Legal access to justice. In Australia, a large gap exists between the number of people with legal problems and the limited funding available for legal assistance. Most of the community sits in the "missing middle" - unable to afford private legal help but on incomes too high to qualify for free legal aid.
AI tools stand a good chance of helping people with sufficient legal capability whose problems are a good fit for the solutions AI can offer. Those cases remain few and far between. For paralegals and legal support staff, tools designed for AI for Paralegals are beginning to address document review and research tasks, though the technology still requires skilled human oversight.
Why this matters for legal professionals
Case numbers and self-representation in courts and tribunals will continue to grow and expand beyond Fair Work. While some cases will be baseless, the growth also reflects the removal of a traditional access barrier: getting in the front door to start proceedings. For legal professionals, the pressure is twofold. Courts and tribunals must balance managing rising caseloads with delivering justice. Law firms and in-house teams will need to distinguish between AI-assisted claims that have merit and those that lack it - a filtering task that demands both legal judgment and technical literacy.
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