Greg Baker obtained the first ruling to apply the federal government’s casual conversion legislation
Macquarie University computing academic Greg Baker has credited AI agents with assisting him to a historic victory at the Fair Work Commission (FWC), reported the Australian Financial Review.
The academic, who is developing AI’s application in different sectors, obtained the first FWC ruling to cite the federal government’s casual conversion legislation, which took effect in 2024. The judgment determined that Baker was entitled to a permanent part-time role at the university, with minimum hours averaged over a year since he had worked consistently during semesters for three years.
Baker had begun teaching at Macquarie’s school of computing in 2023 in a casual capacity. In October 2025, he received a suggestion from his AI tool that he could shift to a part-time role that permitted him to apply for research grants.
Macquarie University denied his request, which led Baker to bring his case to the FWC out of a desire to push back against the university sector’s “permanent casual system”, per the AFR. Baker represented himself against the university using ChatGPT Pro and Claude.
He confessed in a statement published by the AFR that he was partially motivated by “the lulz” of orchestrating a faceoff between AI agents and seasoned lawyers. Macquarie University’s legal team had consisted of veteran employment barrister Leigh Howard and an Australian Higher Education Industrial Association lawyer.
“It’s like if there was a triathlon and you turn up with a penny-farthing bicycle and see how you go. I thought I’m just going to turn up to Fair Work against a large institution using ChatGPT and see what happens”, Baker said in a statement published by the AFR.
The academic uploaded emails, conversations and meeting records to AI tools and trained them to validate their output autonomously. He emphasised that he was using the paid version of ChatGPT, which costs US$200 per month.
“[My AI agents] are trained to chase down every citation and chase down every reference so every day, as I was working on the case, it would just go and check everything I said…That’s digging up cases that nobody would have a prior chance to do unless you had a team of paralegals”, Baker said in a statement published by the AFR.
He shared that ChatGPT Pro had initially required significant support and struggled to tackle legal inquiries. However, new versions of the tool helped Baker get to the point where the AI was handling arguments and bringing up key concerns by June.
The academic instructed ChatGPT and Claude to game the case after Macquarie University filed a late submission on the eve of the hearing on the case.
“It tore apart the university’s arguments, found all the cases, presented it to me, and I don’t think I would have even spent two hours on that. It absolutely demolished the respondent’s arguments. It was like watching a 50-to-nil football game”, Baker said in a statement published by the AFR.
University of Melbourne law professor and Centre for AI and Digital Ethics head Jeannie Paterson said Baker’s legal win marked the first publicised court victory by an AI agent.
“It’s a really exciting development. Does that mean the end of lawyers? It doesn’t at all. But it shows we’re complacent about saying humans are better than AI”, Paterson said in a statement published by the AFR.
Baker said in a statement published by the AFR that the decision was “going to very much change the distribution of power between labour and capital”.
“In August 2031, everybody will have an AI agent as capable as my set-up – it will be just a standard thing on your PC desktop. Very wealthy people have lawyers on tap who will give them a refined answer very quickly because you’re a primary customer, but individuals have not really had that. As this technology diffuses in the population, suddenly the standards of legal argument are going to go up”, he explained.
He predicted that the FWC’s workload pressures would worsen due to AI, as would those of tribunals with low access fees.
“There’s going to be so much pressure on pushing people out of the court system into any other mechanism at all, that AI-mediated systems will just have to become one of those standard stints, whether or not we want that outcome. [It will be] let’s put our bots in a room to argue with each other for 1000 years of human time and let’s pick this up tomorrow and see what resolution they’ve come up with”, Baker said in a statement published by the AFR.
He suggested that while lawyers’ work may decrease, judges’ work would. Thus, courts and tribunals would need to grow.
“I wonder if we’ll see a lot of barristers go up the chain that way”, Baker said in a statement published by the AFR.
The FWC’s judgment on Baker’s case was released on 12 August. Macquarie University is considering an appeal.
