Jonathan Nyst Wins Top Young Criminal Lawyer Award
Nyst Legal is extremely proud to announce that Jonathan Nyst has been named by Lawyers Weekly as Australia’s top young criminal lawyer under the age of 30.
Nyst Legal Solicitor Jordan Roles Wins Griffith University Law Prize
I am very proud to announce that Nyst Legal Solicitor Jordan Roles was this week announced by Griffith University as the winner of last year’s George Tanner Prize for achieving the highest grade in the Griffith University Innocence Project course.
No Bystanders
In his massively successful, triple-platinum 2018 album “Astroworld,” American rapper Travis Scott got the party started with the high-charged rap anthem, ‘NO BYSTANDERS.’ It was an up-tempo call-to-arms, full of rage and rebellion. As it turns out, it may also have been a little prophetic.
The Fine Detail
As anyone can tell you, the property market is going absolutely gangbusters right now. So much so that a bidder at an auction in Sydney’s south last Saturday accidently bid against herself just as she was about to be declared the new owner of the property for sale at the hotly-contested auction. The final price was $1.62 million, with her previous bid being $1.619 million. The underbidder’s last offer was $1.618 million.
Jonathan Nyst Shortlisted For Law Award
As the proud father, and principal of Nyst Legal, I am extremely chuffed to be able to announce that this week, for the second year in succession, my youngest son, and Nyst Legal Senior Associate, Jonathan Nyst, has been shortlisted as one of the finalists in the Criminal Law division of the national Lawyers Weekly 30 Under 30 Awards.
Heroes and Villains
Some years ago I attended a breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel on the Gold Coast, at which the then highly-respected – and now much-maligned – Victoria Cross recipient, Ben Roberts-Smith, was the featured guest speaker. In his riveting address, Mr Roberts-Smith enthralled his audience with a detailed account of his service with the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan, including the extraordinary events that saw him bestowed Australia’s highest award for valour and devotion to duty in the theatre of war. As anyone who has heard the war hero’s harrowing tale of combat and courage under fire could tell you, it’s a hell of a yarn. And boy, did he tell it well.
Hard Cases
The familiar legal adage “Hard cases make bad law” dates back at least as far as the early 1800s. It points to the danger of reacting to an extreme case by making a general, harsh and inflexible law to cover all cases. Wisdom dictates, the adage suggests, that laws are better drafted to target the average – and therefore more common – cases, rather than the extreme ones.
A Matter Of Privilege
Confidential communications between lawyers and their clients are sacrosanct. They are subject to legal professional privilege, which means they cannot be disclosed by anyone – including the lawyer – to anyone else – including the government, the courts, the police, or anyone at all – without the client’s express authorisation. That principle has been around for about 500 years, and remains a fundamental tenant of our legal system. But it has, at times, been sorely tested.
The Social Dilemma
The latest Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, serves up a thought-provoking critique of the unethical and largely unregulated tactics employed by social media platforms, namely surveillance capitalism and data mining, in order to exploit users for commercial benefit. The doco’s director, Jeff Orlowski, seeks to draw a causal link between the rise of these tactics in the 2010’s and broader social, political and economic concerns such as mental health issues, the spread of misinformation/conspiracy theories, and election tampering.
Send In The Clowns
The circus is in town. A crazy new phenomenon is sweeping across the US, Europe, and now even Australia. It trumps the Trump, it’s scarier than Ruddy’s run at the UN, and it’s so weird it even out-weirds planking, if that’s actually possible. Scary killer clowns have taken to lurking on our streets, hiding in the shadows and around corners, waiting to maniacally leap out and scare the living socks off us.
Attack Of The Drones
With the currently almost endemic proliferation in Australian society of audio- and video-recording mobile phones, and the recent announcement by CASA of the relaxation of laws and regulations around the use of surveillance drones in Australian airspace, perhaps it’s time we all sat down to have a good hard rethink about some of our rules around privacy in this country.
Bringing Up Baby
When couples are separating, and negotiating who gets what from the joint property pool, pets (most frequently dogs and cats) are often front and centre in the equation. Usually, the parties are able to negotiate an informal, mutually-acceptable agreement as to custody of their four-legged friends. But it’s not always the case. Sometimes formal orders or agreements are needed to lock down precisely who gets Poochie and on what terms. Dedicating court time to determining the custody of cats and dogs may be thought by some to be an inefficient use of valuable resources, but the fact is family pets often have a profound emotional value to their owners, and that just can’t be ignored.