ND Legal

ND Legal Online Lawyer for Australian individuals, entrepreneurs and small business owners assisting with private and business legal matters and disputes.

31/08/2026

Before your next campaign goes out, whether it’s a website update, a paid ad, a social post, or new packaging copy, run it through three questions.

Can you back up every specific claim, price, quality, result, comparison, with evidence you could actually produce if challenged?

What is the overall impression a reasonable person would take away, not just what the individual words say?

And is there anything you’re leaving out that would change how a reasonable person reads the claim if they knew it?

If you’re confident in all three answers, you’re in a strong position.

If you’re not, that’s the moment to get it checked, before a customer or a regulator does it for you instead.

Link in bio to book a Strategy & Advice Consult before the month is out. Thanks for following along this month.




















These figures are aimed squarely at large companies, but the ACCC’s enforcement activity in recent years has increasingl...
31/08/2026

These figures are aimed squarely at large companies, but the ACCC’s enforcement activity in recent years has increasingly reached small and medium businesses too, particularly around online advertising, influencer marketing, and reviews.

Scale doesn’t exempt a business from the rule.

It just changes how big the number could be if it goes wrong, and how much reputational damage a public complaint can do in the meantime.

Worth knowing the scale of what’s actually at stake before assuming none of this applies to a business your size.

Link in bio if you’d like a proper review.




















30/08/2026

Most advertising compliance conversations focus on words, the specific claims
made in a headline or a caption.

But an image can mislead just as easily as a sentence, and it
doesn’t need a single word attached to do it.

If a photo gives a false impression of size, quality, condition, or likely results, through
lighting, angle, cropping, or simply presenting a best-case outcome as though it’s typical,
that’s capable of being treated the same as a false written claim under the Australian
Consumer Law.

The test is the same either way: what would a reasonable person walk
away believing?

This catches a lot of businesses off guard, because the instinct is to fact-check the words in
an ad, not the pictures sitting next to them.

Worth running your current image library
through the same scrutiny as your copy.

Link in bio for the full explanation.




















29/08/2026

From 28 March 2026, the maximum penalty for a corporation breaching the Australian Consumer Law increased to the greater of 100 million dollars, three times the value of the benefit obtained from the conduct, or 30 percent of the company’s adjusted turnover during the breach period.

Individuals now face penalties of up to 2.5 million dollars.

Most small businesses will never see a penalty anywhere near that scale, and these figures are clearly aimed at deterring large-scale corporate conduct.

But the increase reflects a genuine shift in how seriously these rules are being enforced, and enforcement activity has tended to follow the size of the penalty in the past.

If ACCC scrutiny of advertising was already increasing before this change, it isn’t likely to slow down now.

If it’s been a while since anyone properly checked your advertising, this is a reasonable moment to get that done.

Link in bio.




















A photo can be completely real and still be misleading, if it’s presented as a typical result when it’s actually the bes...
29/08/2026

A photo can be completely real and still be misleading, if it’s presented as a typical result when it’s actually the best outcome out of hundreds of patients or customers.

This is the exact checklist we run before-and-after content through during a review, and it’s worth running your own current content through it before your next post goes live.

Link in bio to book a Strategy & Advice Consult if anything on this list gives you pause.




















28/08/2026

For higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures, AHPRA’s guidelines, which came into effect on 2 September 2025, require before-and-after images to be genuinely unedited, accompanied by a clear disclaimer about individual variation placed where people will actually see it, and reflective of a typical result rather than a single best-case outcome cherry-picked from a much larger group of patients.

These rules got considerably stricter last year, and a lot of businesses in this space are still running content built under the old, looser standard.

If before-and-afters are part of your marketing and you haven’t reviewed them against the current guidelines, that’s worth doing before your next post goes up.

Link in bio.




















The gap between a general wellness claim and a therapeutic one can come down to a single word, and getting it wrong risk...
28/08/2026

The gap between a general wellness claim and a therapeutic one can come down to a single word, and getting it wrong risks a TGA infringement notice on top of the usual ACCC exposure most advertising carries.

For a small wellness or beauty business, a public infringement notice can do more lasting damage to trust than the financial penalty itself.

Swipe through this breakdown before your next product launch or campaign, and if you’re not sure which side of the line your current claims sit on, link in bio and we’ll go through it with you.




















27/08/2026

This surprises a lot of health and wellness businesses: a customer testimonial saying a product worked for them, however genuine, is not accepted by the TGA or the ACCC as substantiation for a therapeutic claim.

If you’re making a claim that a product treats, prevents, cures, or alleviates a specific condition, you need actual clinical or scientific evidence behind those specific words, not anecdotal reports.

“Our customers say it works” feels like proof, and it can be genuinely persuasive marketing content in its own right, but it isn’t a legal defence for a therapeutic claim.

The two things, persuasive testimonials and legal substantiation, need to be kept separate in your mind when you’re deciding what you can actually say.

Full explanation of where testimonials fit and where they don’t is in bio.




















27/08/2026

“Supports healthy digestion” is a general wellness claim.

“Treats irritable bowel syndrome” is a therapeutic claim, and it triggers a completely different set of legal obligations under the Therapeutic Goods Act, including, in many cases, a requirement that the product be included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before that claim can be made at all.

The line between the two categories is easy to cross without noticing, because the language often sounds similarly reasonable.

“Helps manage” can sit right on the boundary depending on what condition follows it.

This is the single most common area of confusion we see in health and wellness marketing, and it’s worth mapping your current claims against the general-versus-therapeutic test properly rather than assuming your wording is safe because it sounds cautious.

Full blog on exactly where the line sits is in bio.




















Reviews and testimonials work because people trust them more than a business’s own claims about itself, which is exactly...
26/08/2026

Reviews and testimonials work because people trust them more than a business’s own claims about itself, which is exactly why they’re one of the ACCC’s clearest current enforcement priorities.

Genuine, well-disclosed reviews are still one of the most persuasive tools available to you.

Fabricated, cherry-picked, or undisclosed ones are one of the fastest ways to attract regulatory attention or a competitor complaint.

This is the checklist we run every client’s testimonial and review strategy through before we sign off on it.

Save it, and if anything on this list makes you want to double-check your current setup, link in bio to book a Strategy & Advice Consult.




















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