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What happens when you take over a telco whose own customers say it sucks?

The reality behind the turnaround - half an hour of complaints at every barbecue, and emails landing in the CEO’s inbox telling him exactly what customers thought of him personally.

In this episode of The Ryan Tan Show, I sit down with Jason Paris - outgoing Chief Executive of One New Zealand - during his final week in the role after almost eight years.

When Jason took over Vodafone New Zealand in 2018, he did something most CEOs would rather outsource to corporate affairs.

He stood in front of his people, put the words “Dear Vodafone, you suck” on the screen, and read the customer complaints out loud - including the ones attacking him personally.

Then he published his own email address and invited customers to send him more.

He still reads them.

What followed was not just the usual corporate ritual of changing the logo and declaring victory.

Earnings went from $463 million at acquisition to over $600 million. Vodafone became One New Zealand, the passive tower assets were sold, and One NZ became the first mobile operator globally to commercially launch a nationwide Starlink Direct to Cell texting service.

Jason’s pitch for the peculiar economics of covering New Zealand was rather memorable:

Sixty million sheep. Five million people.

But this conversation goes well beyond telco.

Jason grew up in Invercargill, raised by a sixteen-year-old solo mum. His father left immediately and never came back. He was rejected from teachers’ college, lasted three months at university and has never held a degree.

He built the career anyway.

Banking. Radio. McDonald’s. Nokia. TVNZ. MediaWorks. Telecom. Spark. Vodafone. One New Zealand.

🏗️ What Was Actually Broken

•  What Jason found when he got into the CEO role 
•  The three problems driving the customer experience: network, service and value 
•  Why the team already knew what was wrong but often lacked the freedom to fix it 
•  Why admitting “we suck” proved more useful than another transformation deck 
•  Why he describes walking into Vodafone as “discovering a gold mine” 

🌏 Cutting the Anchor

•  Why Vodafone Group’s ownership model became a handbrake 
•  How centralised decision-making limited the New Zealand business 
•  What changed when Infratil and Brookfield bought the company 
•  Why local ownership gave management more room to actually manage 

💰 Infratil, Ownership & Value Creation

•  The passive tower sale 
•  Why private ownership can support a longer investment horizon 
•  How much of the result was genuine operating turnaround versus financial structure 
•  Why the quality and values of a board matter as much as the money 
•  Why Jason says being brilliant is not enough if you are unbearable to work with 

🧠 Culture, Empowerment & Leadership

•  Jason’s three leadership principles 
•  Why “you can’t be good at work if you’re not good at home first” 
•  Why the person closest to the customer should be trusted to make the call 
•  Why leaders should hire people better than themselves 
•  Whether One New Zealand’s culture survives once Jason disappears from the inbox 

📧 The CEO Inbox

•  What customer emails tell him that executive meetings cannot 
•  Why senior leaders often stop hearing what is really going wrong 
•  Why transparency gives him licence to defend his people when the customer is wrong 

🔄 Earning the Right to Rebrand

•  Why a new name means very little if the old problems are still underneath it 
•  What had to be fixed before Vodafone could become One New Zealand 
•  Why the rebrand came years after the turnaround began 

📡 Starlink & the Future of Connectivity

•  Connecting a phone in your pocket to satellites hundreds of kilometres above Earth 
•  Why telecommunications infrastructure is usually invisible right up until the moment it stops working 
•  Why satellite changes what mobile coverage can look like 

🇦🇺 Australia vs New Zealand Telcos

•  Why the two markets have taken different paths 
•  Jason’s view of the leadership at Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom
•  Why, perhaps inconveniently for angry customers, he thinks the telcos deserve a little more credit than they get 

🤖 AI, Automation & Fewer Jobs

One of the most direct answers in the episode.

•  Why automation has already removed the need for hundreds of roles 
•  Jason’s honest answer on whether One NZ will ultimately need fewer people 
•  Where AI should take over repetitive work 
•  Where people still matter most 
•  Whether society can adapt as quickly as the technology - and who ultimately gets the economic upside 

👨‍👩‍👧 Fatherhood & Priorities

•  How growing up without a father shaped Jason as a dad 
•  Why he said no to Elon Musk and a SpaceX rocket launch
•  What his daughter said about her Year 6 graduation that made the decision easy 
•  How he decides which moments he absolutely needs to be there for 

❤️ The Father Who Never Came Back

Jason has always called him his father, not his dad.

So I ask what he would say if he could have one conversation with him now, knowing the man and the father he became.

He takes a moment before answering.

It becomes the most personal part of the conversation.

🌱 One Person Who Believes in You

Jason shares what One NZ’s work with disadvantaged young people taught him about the single factor that can change the direction of a young person’s life.

It also turns out to explain quite a lot about Jason Paris.

🚪 Knowing When to Leave

•  Why eight years felt like the right time 
•  Why staying longer could have blocked the people coming up behind him 
•  What he is handing to the next generation of leadership 
•  Why leaving while things are working may be harder than leaving when they are not 

🪞 “The Mirror Never Lies”

A line Steve Hansen once gave him.

I ask what the mirror tells Jason as he prepares to walk out of One New Zealand for the final time.

After eight years in the job, his answer is remarkably short.

This is not just a telco story.

It is about turning around a business, changing ownership, building culture that outlasts you, using technology without losing humanity, raising a family, backing people and knowing when your job is done.

And, occasionally, admitting to an entire company that the customers may have had a point.

Connect with Jason: linkedin.com/in/jason-paris-3404565

Further reading
The written version of this conversation, with the numbers: how Vodafone New Zealand became One New Zealand, and what Australia could take from it. “Dear Vodafone, you suck.” The chief executive said it first, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/dear-vodafone-you-suck/
The Australian side of the mirror: what TPG Telecom has done with Vodafone Australia since the 2020 merger. Pawning the Silver, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/pawning-the-silver/

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

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Most accountants charge by the hour, guard their knowledge, and wait for referrals.

Davie Mach does none of that.

He started in accounting at 17, went through KPMG, and at 26 launched Box Advisory from his brother's pink bedroom. Today the firm works with over 500 small businesses, generates 140 inbound leads a month, and Davie has built 51,000 YouTube subscribers by giving away what most accountants charge for.

But the story behind it isn't clean. Vietnamese immigrant family. Mother's chronic illness. A father who broke down in his son's bedroom at 15 and said he couldn't pay for tutoring anymore. A $700k mortgage that felt like a life sentence. Depression, gambling, credit card debt at 21.

This conversation is about all of it.

👨‍👩‍👧 The Origin Story

• The day his father broke down and said the family couldn't afford tutoring anymore - and why that moment changed everything
• Being 15 and realising a $700k-$1M mortgage was sitting on his shoulders
• The depression, gambling and credit card debt phase nobody talks about - and the brother who pulled him out of it
• How watching his parents get financially destroyed by bad advice became the entire foundation of Box Advisory

🏗️ Building Box Advisory

• Launching at 26 with $25,000, no clients, and a terrible golf networking strategy
• Muting himself on client calls every time the garage door opened - what the first 12 months actually looked like
• Why he killed timesheets from day one - and the one-third formula that made the whole model work
• Hiring a salesperson with zero accounting experience and pairing them with a junior accountant - why everyone said it wouldn't work and why it did

📊 The Business Model That Broke the Rules

• Why hourly billing is a cash flow trap - and why most accounting firms are running on overdrafts because of it
• The deep dive content strategy that generates 140 inbound leads a month - and why the videos with 500 views made more money than the ones with 100,000

🤖 AI and the Accounting Profession

• Why Davie isn't afraid of AI for himself - but is genuinely worried about what it does to his team
• The back-office accountants and bookkeepers whose jobs are most exposed - and why it's happening faster than anyone expected
• Why 58% of Australian tax agents are retiring in the next decade - and why that creates more demand, not less
• What younger accountants should be doing right now

📋 AML/CTF Tranche 2 - What Every Accountant Needs to Know

• From July 2026, accountants come under AUSTRAC's AML/CTF regime for the first time - what that actually means in practice
• Why Davie thinks it's a good thing - and what the NDIS fraud crisis reveals about what happens without proper gatekeeping
• The compliance costs, the VOI requirements, the onboarding overhaul - and who bears it

🧠 The Real Cost of Building

• Working until 11:30pm with a six-month-old at home - and being honest about what that actually feels like
• Why there's no such thing as permanent balance - only cycles
• Why working with your life partner is like playing a video game together - and why beating each boss round together creates memories nothing else can match

Davie Mach built his business from the same wound his parents couldn't recover from. This is what that looks like when it works.

If you're a founder, accountant, small business owner, or just someone trying to understand money better - this episode will stay with you.

🌐 www.boxas.com.au 📺 YouTube: Davie Mach 💼 LinkedIn: Davie Mach

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

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Send us Fan Mail

What happens when a Cambridge-educated humanities student walks away from a Sydney Law degree to build AI for one of the most risk-averse industries in the world?

Will McCartney did exactly that. At 23, with no law degree and no track record in legal practice, he started building Habeas - an Australian legal AI platform that finds real case law, cites it to paragraph level, and doesn't make things up.

Three years later it's winning Australian AI Awards, integrating with major legal platforms, and being used daily by some of Australia's most experienced litigators. This conversation is the honest version of what building that actually took.

🎓 The Origin Story

• He left Cambridge, transferred to Sydney Law, then walked away from the degree entirely - and the single administrative decision that made it inevitable
• He built a better product in crypto and still lost to vaporware - and nearly made the same mistake again with Habeas

🔧 Building Habeas

• The first version wasn't good enough - and he pitched it to a Big Six firm anyway. Here's what happened
• Why the lawyers who pressure-test Habeas hardest are the ones with 15 to 20 years experience - not juniors
• The moment compliance stopped being optional - and what forced that reckoning earlier than planned

🧠 The Hallucination Problem

• A lawyer used Claude to research a case and Copilot to check Claude's work. It still hallucinated. That submission went to Federal Court
• The hallucination problem nobody talks about - it's not fake cases, it's real cases that get twisted. And it's harder to fix
• Why Habeas searches first and thinks second - and why every legal AI that does it the other way round is gambling with someone's client
• Anyone promising zero hallucination in legal AI is either lying or doesn't understand how law works

⚖️ AI and the Legal Profession

• Big Law has innovation teams, enterprise budgets and dedicated IT. They're still losing to 20-person boutique firms on AI adoption. Why
• The billable hour is dying and most partners are pretending it isn't - what's actually replacing it
• 80% of Australian legal matters never get properly resolved. AI could change that. Or it could just make expensive lawyers faster. Which one is happening
• What he actually tells law grads who ask if they have a future in the profession

🏗️ The Moat & Distribution

• The technical advantage in legal AI is disappearing faster than anyone wants to admit - here's where the real defensibility actually lives
• What stops a well-resourced competitor building the same thing tomorrow - and whether that answer should make you nervous

💰 Bootstrapping vs Raising

• Money was available. He chose not to take it. What that cost him and what it gave back
• Why he's building a syndicate of lawyers who use the product instead of going to VC - and what that says about where Habeas is headed

🚀 The Future

• Why the next twelve months is about going deeper not wider - and what that looks like in practice
• Australia first. But the next markets are closer to ready than you'd think

If you're a lawyer, a founder, or just someone trying to understand where AI is taking one of the world's oldest professions - this is the episode.

🌐 habeas.ai 📧 [email protected] 💼 linkedin.com/in/willmccartney

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What actually happens when an Australian business fails?

Not the sanitised version. The real one - the day-one phone calls, the employees demanding wages to put food on the table that night, the childcare centres where a commercial decision becomes a moral one, and the directors who waited six months too long to pick up the phone.

In this episode I sit down with Glenn Livingstone, founding partner of WLP Restructuring - one of Australia's fastest-growing independent insolvency firms. Glenn has nearly two decades in the profession, over 1,000 formal appointments, and $64.8 million returned across every class of creditor since co-founding WLP out of COVID in 2021.

But before any of that - Glenn first read a creditors report at age 13. His father had just lost his entitlements in a corporate collapse. The liquidator recovered $400,000. Their fees were $400,000. That moment chose his career for him.

This conversation goes well beyond the mechanics of insolvency. It's honest, commercially sharp, and at times genuinely moving.

🏗️ Building WLP from Nothing

• Walking away from KPMG during COVID to start an independent firm with three people and no guaranteed work
• How WLP landed 4 voluntary administration appointments in its first week

⚠️ Early Warning Signs of Business Distress

• The financial red flags directors consistently ignore until it's too late
• Why the ATO has functioned as a de facto bank for struggling SMEs - and why that era is ending fast
• Why directors wait too long - and what it costs them when they do

🚨 Payday Super: The Coming Reckoning

• Why the introduction of payday super is "a little bit frightening" from an insolvency perspective
• What the closure of clearing houses means for businesses already under pressure
• Why this change won't increase the number of insolvencies - but will dramatically accelerate their timing

🔄 The Small Business Restructuring Regime

• Why SBR was a genuine game changer for viable businesses in distress
• Why the ATO is now rejecting proposals it used to wave through and what that means for directors
• The one-shot nature of SBR - and why botching it is catastrophic
• The uncomfortable question nobody in the profession is asking yet about the 2023-24 SBR cohort

⚖️ Insolvent Trading & Section 588G

• Whether Australia's insolvent trading regime is actually working as intended
• Why 588G plays completely differently for SME directors versus ASX-listed companies
• How liquidators decide when to pursue insolvent trading claims - and when it's simply uneconomic

😔 The Human Side of Appointments

• What day one actually looks like inside a failing business - the staff, the suppliers, the distress
• Why childcare appointments are among the hardest in the profession
• How to stay calm when employees are demanding money

📰 Media, Scrutiny & High Profile Collapses

• The role media plays in major administrations - when it helps versus hurts
• How administrators navigate the press when a high-profile business goes under
• The story of Daryl Lee chocolates - and how a media announcement accidentally saved the business

Glenn Livingstone is one of the most commercially pragmatic and genuinely human practitioners in Australian insolvency. This is the conversation most directors never have - until it's too late.

If you're a director, founder, accountant, lawyer, or creditor - this episode will change how you think about business distress.

Connect with Glenn: wlpr.com.au

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Your credit score might not be the real reason you were declined.

What if the decision came from a fraud flag, behavioural risk score, or database you're not allowed to see? No notification. No explanation. No right to correct it.

In this episode I sit down with Graham Doessel - Founder & CEO of MyCRA Lawyers, Australia's only dedicated credit repair law firm.

30 years inside the system. 91%+ audited success rate removing defaults. If nine out of ten can be removed, how many should never have been listed?

He debated former Privacy Commissioner Tim Pilgrim on 4BC - the phone lines lit up. He now argues Australia's credit system operates on a "guilty until proven innocent" model.

💡 What You'll Learn - Inside Australia's Credit Black Box:

⚡ The credit decision black box - bureau data, IDMatrix, device fingerprints, behavioural modelling and algorithmic scoring. Apply too often and velocity checks flag you across lenders before a human ever sees it.

🏠 What score do you need for a mortgage? - there's an Equifax threshold borrowers don't know about. Miss it by one point: auto-declined. Hit it and you can still be rejected for postcode, job stability, or a payday lender inquiry. A good score gets you to the door. Behind it is another black box.

🕵️ Equifax's secret fraud list - Fraud Focus Group and IDMatrix databases silently blacklisting people for up to 15 years. Graham asked Equifax directly. They declined to answer. He argues Part IIIA of the Privacy Act requires disclosure if this data is being used to assess or refuse credit - and that isn’t happening.

🔒 How innocent people get flagged and never told - apply too many times while desperate and fraud engines blacklist you for years. Not fraud by any definition. These systems sit outside credit reporting frameworks - declined without seeing what triggered it.

🏦 The debanking connection - opaque scoring and fraud signals intersect with Australia's debanking crisis, explored in my episode with Harrison Dell.

⚖️ "Not a single lender has the legal right to list anything on a credit file" - Graham's bombshell, eight years in the making. Every default, inquiry and late repayment potentially unlawful. Revealed here first.

📮 "They just make shit up" - a creditor sent a fabricated default notice on letterhead of a company that hadn't been incorporated. When challenged, they produced a different document.

🏦 "AFCA sides with the ones who pay their bills." - funded by the same banks and lenders whose complaints it adjudicates. No conflict of interest there, right?

📉 CCR was mis-sold - inquiries 42% of your score. Late repayments 38%. Defaults just 7%. A four-cent late payment does more damage than a court judgment.

🔍 The shadow data economy - skip-tracing platforms aggregating billions of records from telcos, ASIC registers, marketing datasets and public records. Most people don't know these databases exist.

🏛️ 355,000 taxpayers sent to Recoveriescorp - private-equity backed. Final notices targeting welfare recipients. Critics warn of Robodebt 2.0.

📊 Equifax holds 85% of Australia's credit files. One algorithm. Millions of outcomes. People with bad credit "get treated like lepers."

🤬 "These fucksticks in power have no clue."

💀 "The system is fucking broken. It really is."

📊 "They don't give a fuck about you. You're just a number."

Connect with Graham Doessel:

💼 MyCRA Lawyers - https://www.mycra.com.au

📱 TikTok: @mycralawyers

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this deep-dive conversation, I sit down with Harrison Dell, one of Australia’s most recognisable tax lawyers and the founder of Cadena Legal. You may know him from TikTok and LinkedIn, where he turns dense tax law into sharp, funny, brutally clear explanations - including his famous dig at the ATO’s DeFi guidance being “single-ply toilet paper.”  

But behind the humour is a lawyer with rare insider insight.

Before founding Cadena, Harry spent years inside the Australian Taxation Office, rotating through the graduate program, complex audit teams, and eventually the Tax Avoidance Taskforce. His experience gives him a uniquely honest view of how the ATO thinks, how it selects cases, and what it gets wrong - especially as debt collection hardens and litigation outcomes slip.  

Across two hours, we cover:

🧩 Inside the ATO

• How the ATO actually works behind closed doors
• Data matching, AI, and the staggering amount of information the ATO holds on every taxpayer
• Why technical expertise inside the ATO is declining - and how that affects audits, disputes, and outcomes
• The surprising distinction between incompetence, malice, and simple misunderstanding inside audit teams

⚖️ Crypto Tax & Web3

• The biggest crypto myths Harry still sees every month
• Why token wrapping, staking, airdrops, and smart contracts produce messy - often illogical - tax consequences
• Why Australia desperately needs safe harbour rules for digital assets
• The ATO’s limited understanding of crypto despite holding enormous amounts of data
• How Harry became the most recognisable crypto tax voice in Australia

🏦 Australia’s Debanking Crisis

• Harry’s own story: how AirWallex abruptly shut down Cadena’s accounts mid-transaction, freezing client money
• What this means for crypto-aligned businesses
• Why banks can quietly kill an entire industry by restricting access to payment rails

💥 The ATO’s Hard Pivot on Debt & Insolvency

• Why the ATO is aggressively chasing $55 billion of outstanding tax debt
• How director penalty notices (DPNs) and garnishees are being used faster and earlier
• Why the ATO is rejecting Small Business Restructuring Plans (SBRs) it used to accept at 15–25¢ in the dollar
• The economic consequences of forcing viable businesses into insolvency
• The quiet return of a more punitive, pre-Chris Jordan ATO culture

🏛️ The Courts: Bendel, s100A, Part IVA, and Why the ATO Is Losing More Often

• Why the ATO lost Bendel at the AAT, then the Federal Court, then the Full Federal Court
• What happened in the High Court hearing - and why the judges pushed back hard
• The deeper problem: deteriorating technical capability + courts less willing to defer to the ATO
• Why taxpayers should be paying attention as these test cases reshape trust distributions and family tax planning

📢 Personal Branding for Professionals

• How Harry turned tax - the driest topic imaginable - into a social media brand people want to watch
• The future of professional content on TikTok and LinkedIn
• Why authenticity is now a competitive advantage in law

This episode is a true insider’s map of how tax power works in Australia - from audits to crypto rules to the evolving role of the courts. If you’re a founder, adviser, accountant, lawyer, crypto investor, or just someone who gets nervous when the ATO emails you: this conversation will change how you think.

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when one of Australia’s fastest-growing accounting startups signs clients faster than it can service them, scales a delivery engine that can’t keep up, and collapses under the weight of its own ambition?

In this episode of The Ryan Tan Show, I sit down with Elvis Sehovic - former Head of Tax & Accounting at Retinue - for the first in-depth, insider account of a hyper-growth accounting firm that went from meteoric rise… to operational free fall… to collapse.

Elvis was there for all of it: the explosive sales machine, the offshore scale-up, the cultural pressure cooker, the client churn, the staff burnout, the internal panic, and ultimately, the voluntary liquidation that shocked the industry.

This conversation is raw, emotional, and disarmingly honest.

At points, Elvis needed to pause, breathe, and process the memories.

If you’ve ever worked in accounting, professional services, operations, startups, leadership or culture, this is unmissable.

It’s a blueprint for everything that can go wrong when speed outruns structure - and a rare, human look inside a business unraveling in real time.

Today, Elvis leads Accounting & Tax at The Polyglot Group, applying the hard-earned lessons from Retinue to help businesses scale sustainably into Australia.

🔥 The ignition point of Retinue’s rise - how an aggressive sales engine, flat-fee pricing, and relentless marketing created unstoppable early momentum.

📈 The growth model that looked bulletproof - and why it worked brilliantly at first.

💸 The economics behind collapse - how underpricing, misaligned incentives, and unrealistic delivery assumptions quietly dug the company’s grave.

🧨 The internal cracks no one could ignore - staff breakdowns, crying in the office, walkouts, burnout, and operational chaos as the workload became unmanageable.

🏗️ Why scaling a services business is nothing like scaling tech - and how Retinue tried to force a SaaS playbook onto a labour-driven industry.

👥 The culture inside hyper-growth - panic, pressure, competing egos, denial at the leadership table, and the emotional cost on staff trying to hold everything together.

🚨 The moment staff started whispering: “This can’t last.” - from impossible client loads to compliance backlogs to frantic internal firefights.

💥 The inside story of the attempted sale - why multiple firms refused to touch the client book, and how Squeeze ended up acquiring it in a distressed state.

📉 The boardroom reality - optimism vs panic, “we’re fine” vs “we’re drowning,” and the psychological theatre behind a business in free fall.

😔 The human toll - Elvis’ experience supporting a team under extreme pressure, dealing with distressed clients, and confronting the emotional aftermath of a collapsing model.

🧭 The lessons every founder, accountant, operator, or startup leader must hear:

• Speed without structure is a death sentence
• You cannot out-scale poor unit economics
• You cannot offshore your way out of chaos
• Culture breaks before numbers do
• Leadership denial is fatal
• “Fastest-growing” often predicts “fastest-collapsing”

🚀 How to build a services business that scales without imploding - sustainable pricing, capacity planning, ethical leadership, operational backbone, and protecting your people.

Further reading
The Retinue series at Unaudited, written from ASIC filings and court records:
Part 1, Cost of Sales: how a firm selling accounting services never made a gross profit on them. https://www.unaudited.com.au/cost-of-sales/
Part 2, First in Line: who stood where when the liquidators arrived. https://www.unaudited.com.au/first-in-line/
Part 3, Restraint: an earlier sale, a promise not to compete, and the lawsuit that followed. https://www.unaudited.com.au/restraint/

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when a fourth-generation lawyer walks away from big-firm life and builds one of the most recognisable legal brands in Australia - using coffee, clarity, and a deep command of corporate law?

In this episode of The Ryan Tan Show, I sit down with James d’Apice - founder and principal of Gravamen, and creator of the viral series Coffee and a Case Note - to explore how he’s modernising the legal profession while remaining anchored in serious commercial expertise.

A seasoned commercial litigator, James specialises in shareholder and co-owner disputes, oppression proceedings, and equity claims under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) - representing clients in complex matters that often determine control, value, and the future of their businesses. His ability to translate that technical depth into plain English has made Coffee and a Case Note a national phenomenon - a masterclass in accessible, human-centred legal storytelling.

At Gravamen, James applies the same rigour to his practice as he does to his content. The firm’s focus on high-stakes disputes and tailored strategic advice attracts founders, directors, and investors navigating breakdowns in trust and governance. Beyond the courtroom, his Values in Action initiative donates at least $1,000 each month to organisations addressing inequality, wealth disparity, and environmental sustainability - embedding social responsibility into the DNA of the firm.

From litigation strategy and corporate governance to communication and ethics, James shares how discipline, authenticity, and courage can redefine what modern legal leadership looks like.

💡 What You’ll Learn

☕ How Coffee and a Case Note evolved from a one-minute experiment into a national legal micro-brand

📱 Why short-form storytelling and platforms like TikTok are transforming professional credibility and client trust

💸 The economics of charging your rate - and why underpricing erodes both respect and results

⚖️ Lessons from shareholder and oppression disputes - how to recognise, prevent, and resolve co-owner conflicts before they escalate

💼 How Gravamen’s Values in Action program turns principle into policy - proving profit and purpose can coexist

🚀 The blueprint for building a high-value boutique practice grounded in focus, integrity, and client alignment

🌍 Why the next generation of lawyers will need as much fluency in communication and ethics as they do in law

🔗 Connect with James d’Apice

🌐 Website: gravamen.com.au

☕ Watch: Coffee and a Case Note on YouTube

📱 TikTok: @coffeeandacasenote

💼 LinkedIn: James d’Apice

📸 Instagram: @coffeeandacasenote

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What does it take to go from fighting Nintendo in court to leading one of Australia’s largest online legal teams at Lawpath, the country’s leading online legal platform for small businesses and startups, and then launching your own AI-powered boutique law firm?

In this episode of The Ryan Tan Show, I sit down with Damin Murdock - founder of Leo Lawyers and former Chief Legal Officer at Lawpath - to unpack how one lawyer went from courtroom battles to building a modern legal practice that’s changing how law gets done.

Over nearly two decades, Damin has advised on over $100 million in capital raises, represented clients in high-stakes intellectual property disputes (including against global giant Nintendo), and helped thousands of startups and SMEs access affordable legal services through Lawpath’s fixed-fee and subscription models.

Now, he’s applying that experience to Leo Lawyers, a new breed of firm that blends courtroom craftsmanship with automation, AI, and deep commercial expertise - spanning corporate law, litigation, and construction.

From early lessons in perfection and advocacy, to his time scaling Lawpath’s legal arm and experimenting with AI avatars, automation, and research tools like Habeas, Damin reveals how technology and law are converging - and what that means for founders, lawyers, and anyone building in a fast-changing world.

This conversation is part war story, part masterclass - and a must-listen for anyone curious about the intersection of law, innovation, and the human touch.

💡 What You’ll Learn From This Interview

• How Damin took on Nintendo in a landmark IP dispute - and what it taught him about innovation, risk, and resilience.
• The journey from founding Murdock Cheng Legal Practice to leading the legal operations of Lawpath, and the lessons from advising over 2,000 startups.
• The truth about AI in law - what’s actually useful, what’s hype, and how new tools are reshaping legal research and drafting.
• Insights from advising on $100M+ capital raises and helping founders avoid the most common fundraising mistakes.
• Why Damin believes lawyers should “stay in their lane” - and how deep focus and efficiency create better outcomes for clients.
• What the next decade of law looks like: automation, pricing disruption, human connection, and the death of the billable hour.

🔗 Connect with Damin:

Website: leolawyers.com.au

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leolawyers

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Leo-Lawyers

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/leo-lawyers

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Leo.Lawyers

Further reading
Who owns Lawpath, what Westpac’s $10 million bought, and the board that followed: The Observer’s Chair, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/the-observers-chair/
Lawpath co-founder Nick Abrahams and the TPG Telecom Foundation: Quo Vadis, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/quo-vadis/

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

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Natasha is the head of operations and part of the executive team that plays a critical role in driving the growth and success of Lawpath - Australia's number one online legal platform that has helped over 300,000 small businesses across Australia. 

As a strong female leader, Natasha gets to champion the voice of women whilst also helping people fulfil their dreams of starting their businesses, something she is very passionate about after working in a startup that assisted both migrants and refugees in starting their businesses.

When Natasha first started at Lawpath, the team was very small but growing rapidly. Armed with a commercial law degree, she was employee number 7 and saw that the challenges and opportunities ahead of her were huge. Her initial role was in sales and customer support, setting processes, and building the foundations of the product, which has now evolved to focus more on operations and strategy development, and today she is the Chief of Staff at Lawpath.

As a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, it was due to her efforts that the company rolled out an inclusive parental leave policy that gave all parents the flexibility to adjust to their new family life. Today, with the platform's explosive growth, her leadership is constantly focused on building trust, loyalty, transparency, and results-oriented objectives in the team.

Natasha has been awarded as a finalist in the Lawyer's Weekly Women for Legal Operations Professional of The Year and is often featured in the media. She is also a speaker for Salesforce Live - The Small Business Show.

What You’ll Learn From This Interview:

1. Lawpath's early systems and processes and how they've systemised as the company as grown to serve beyond 300,000 businesses.

2. How Lawpath has built a strong company culture that has led the business to being nominated as a Top 4 finalist in the AFR's Best Places to Work in 2022. Natasha also shares how the business has managed to stay consistent as the business has scaled and grown headcount from a few employees to over 70 today.

3. How Natasha champions women in the workplace and has embraced diversity and inclusion initiatives at Lawpath.

4. How Natasha balances motherhood with leadership, and her advice to aspiring female leaders who are looking to develop their career and/or business.

If you want to keep in touch with Natasha, you can reach her on LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about Lawpath, you can do so on their website: https://lawpath.com.au/

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ryan Tan Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me hit the ‘subscribe’ button if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or hit the ‘follow’ button if you are listening on Spotify.

Further reading
Who owns Lawpath, what Westpac’s $10 million bought, and the board that followed: The Observer’s Chair, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/the-observers-chair/
Lawpath co-founder Nick Abrahams and the TPG Telecom Foundation: Quo Vadis, at Unaudited. https://www.unaudited.com.au/quo-vadis/

About the show
The Ryan Tan Show is hosted by Ryan Tan, who also writes Unaudited, independent analysis of Australian companies read from the filings rather than the press release.
Read: https://www.unaudited.com.au
Subscribe free: https://www.unaudited.com.au/#/portal/signup

Support the show