Thirteen days after she got sick, they made her redundant.

For almost five years, Claire ran the business side of a small health practice: the money, the payroll, the hiring, the rosters. Two directors, a team that relied on her, and not one concern raised about her work.

In November 2025 a long-term health condition flared up badly, and her doctor signed her off a month at a time. At the end of January she met the two directors, her hands swollen and shaking, and brought them a plan: hire a stand-in for six to twelve months while she recovered. Fine, they said.

Thirteen days later, a letter. The practice was proposing to make her job redundant. Her work was not disappearing; it was being handed to other people. She was offered two new roles instead, both full-time, both in the office, neither with a salary attached.

Then a deed: a few thousand dollars to go quietly, and seven days to sign. She did not sign. Over the following weeks the offers crept up, to a low-five-figure sum described as final. Her employment ended in April.

She lodged her own claim with the Fair Work Commission, with a general AI tool open in the next tab. Then the practice filed its written response, and in the middle of the legal language it said the quiet part out loud. Her absence, it wrote, had “provided an opportunity to assess how operational responsibilities were functioning”.

August was the hardest month. Seventy-five hours at her kitchen table: every email, every text, every document from five years, scanned and sorted, and all of it run through ChatGPT, Gemini and NotebookLM. Each one handed her case back tidier and more confident than she had put it in. None of them had read a Fair Work decision.

“It sounded right. But I actually wasn’t sure. It could have been saying anything, and it sounded believable.”Claire

A week before her conciliation she found Lawcaptain, and sent everything she had with one line: I am comfortable being told where my case is weak.

Her own application relied on one protection in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). The review found three in her facts, and it told her how a case like hers is won.

It also told her where she was weak. She could not claim lost wages for the months she was unfit to work anyway, and the practice’s loss the year before was its best argument. Neither point touched the heart of her case.

A dismissal like Claire’s rarely raises only one claim. These are the ones that most often come with it.

Most applications do not end in a payment. About one in six of the unfair dismissal decisions we have examined reached compensation or reinstatement. The review tells you which side of that line you are on.

Because Claire was our first customer, we did one thing more: a four-point opening to read aloud, a first offer with every dollar explained, and a page headed If they say / you say. She read the opening aloud until she did not need the page.

“At least I sound like I know what I’m talking about now. And I’m confident that I do.”Claire, the week before

On the day, by video, she delivered all four points without looking down. When the Commission officer put the practice’s argument to her (a restructure, a loss last year, the risk of a year in court), she knew why a real restructure did not answer her claim.

Four months earlier, the practice’s final offer had been a low-five-figure sum. That afternoon it came back at mid five figures. She did not sign on the spot: both sides should take advice, she said. The deed was reviewed, and the matter settled for a mid-five-figure sum.

“I didn’t get flustered or back away from my position.”Claire, the morning after

The opening script and the offer ladder are being built into Lawcaptain now.

You check it. No lawyer reads your report before it reaches you, and it is not legal advice. From 20 October 2026 you sign a declaration to the Commission that every fact, case and quote in your application is correct, and the report is written so you can check each one.