Dilanchian Business Lawyers & Consultants

12/02/2026

[ vision and sound ] Clinical psychologist Dr G is an excellent teacher on body language. With each of his videos, my body language reading vocabulary is increased.

For barristers and solicitors, certainly for me, Dr G's pointers have practical value in client, witness and expert interviews, whether conducted in person or virtually.

They're handy too for reading the body language of judges, colleagues and people in everyday life.

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Sound

Reading sound I can add as an additional point.

During preparations for a major court case a few years ago, one of our barristers surprised me saying there is little difference between cross-examination conducted online and that conducted in court.

I did not agree then, and I do not agree now.

Working as I do with prosumer (ie higher end) microphones, has improved my hearing in recent years. I know what to listen for better than before.

Inexpensive microphones used in courts and other professional environments are less able to pick up - than trained human ears can - divergences such as tonal shifts, pauses, and micro-expressions. Meaning is reduced when dynamic sound is recorded flat or compressed.

Go to my sponsor https://aura.com/drg to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposed.Join this channel to get access to perks:https:...

09/01/2026

An interesting business story. It follows the November 2025 news of a US private equity firm buying El Jannah, the 1998-founded Lebanese charcoal chicken franchise for a reported A$1 billion.

Retailing in food and beverages is part of my family's history since about 1955, first in Tehran, then in Sydney. In Sydney, my eldest brothers, David and Hratch, started Omar Khayam's Delicatessen in the suburb of Chatsood in 1969. I edited a family Super 8 video in 2023 which shows the shop.

The mid-20th century saw a significant influx of European immigrants to Australia, particularly Italians, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans, who brought their culinary traditions. By the late 1960s, these cuisines had begun influencing Australia’s food culture, introducing delicatessen items like cured meats, cheeses, olives, and specialty breads.

While Anglo-Celtic food traditions still dominated, Australians were gradually becoming more adventurous in their tastes, especially in urban areas like Sydney. Delicatessens were becoming appreciated as places to purchase unique and high-quality foods.

A delicatessen in Chatswood would have been somewhat original at the time:
• Specialty Offerings: Such stores would differentiate themselves from standard grocers by offering unique, high-quality imported or artisanal goods.
• Appeal to European Immigrants: The immigrant community, particularly those of European heritage, would likely have welcomed a source of familiar foods.
• Broader Appeal: Curious Anglo-Australians might also have been drawn to the store as they explored international cuisines.

Most people don’t know the difference between Sushi Hub and Sushi Sushi, the two biggest operators in the takeaway sushi game – but investors do.

30/10/2025

etc - search and research preferences survey data | I'll first comment on the second, third and fourth images.

The SECOND image is the cover page of a short October 2025 article by McKinsey & Company. It's based on its August 2025 survey of 1,927 people in the US. The questions asked related to use of AI platforms for research and search.

The article has a consumerist bent, ie how to sell more stuff.

As copied below, Exhibit 4 and Exhibit 5 I find to be the most useful content in the article.

THIRD IMAGE: Exhibit 4 indicates that the preference for "search" work by 44% of those surveyed was with using , ie AI-specific platforms. ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity are mentioned. That's 13% more than the 31% who prefer .

FOURTH IMAGE: In Exhibit 5 a stand out is the importance of blogs navy blue colour). However for "E-commerce" "brand and retailer" gets 80% of the attention. It is unstated as to how "consumer packaged goods" differs from "E-commerce".

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FIRST IMAGE: Generalising, in Web 1.0 blogs proliferated, in Web 2.0 social platforms and the they defaulted to ensh*tification (credit: Cory Doctorow). In this AI-lead era of the second half of the 2020s, will online spaces become massively populated with degraded information, images, footage and other material? I expect so, for a variety of reasons.

The response should be to publish, improve skills for doing so, and do it often. Happy to chat on this if you reach out. You know where I live, just search noricd.

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HAT TIP LINK: Hat tip to my friend and client who shared the McKinsey & Company article, the link for which is https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/new-front-door-to-the-internet-winning-in-the-age-of-ai-search

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In passing, the three books below I've read in October 2025 have been all or partly on AI. The first two are by techno-optimists.

• Kurzweil, Raymond (2024) The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI. Penguin Viking. 555 pp

• Mostaque, Emad (2025) The Last Economy - A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics. Intelligent Internet. 185 pp

• Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon (2023) Power and Progress - Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. Hachette Book Group. 598 pp.

19/09/2025

DEBATING TOPIC: Clients can benefit more from business lawyers whose vision integrates past and present histories and trends in business and life than from law nerds. A REFERENCE FOR THAT DEBATE: Linked below is the DOWNLOAD page for the 212 page 20th annual HILDA Statistical Report by a team at University of Melbourne.

It reports on the life and work of over 17,000 Australians followed each year over the course of their lifetime.

The report's full title is "The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey: Selected Findings from Waves 1 to 23".

QUOTE: "This report presents select findings from Waves 1 to 23 of the

HILDA Survey and explores 10 topics:
• Households and family life
• Household economic wellbeing
• The labour market
• Retirement
• Housing insurance
• Bodily pain
• Psychological distress
• Blood donation
• Friendships
• Time stress

DOWNLOAD PAGE to the Report's PDF - https://lnkd.in/gKMWaUcJ

12/03/2025

A trend continues among publishers towards subscription not artefact sales. This is my short case study on the wonderful writer, Ted Gioia's The Honest Broker newsletter on Substack. Subscribe to it here https://www.honest-broker.com/

26/02/2025

We've had these thoughts in our "Slides Content Repository" for decades. Today they morphed into this graphic, with raised eyebrow notes on AI.

26/02/2025

Dealing with a difficult person or legal situation? Explore the of the people involved. Make records around points 1, 2 and 3. Exploring points 4, 5 and 6 may turn on a lightbulb. That's been our experience for decades.

21/02/2025

After the Amazon/MGM deal news for the James Bond franchise settles, our 2009 blog post could do with an update.

FIRST SENTENCE: "The intellectual property story behind the James Bond films provides practical guidance on how nurturing assets makes them grow, bear fruit & become a money magnet."

Dilanchian Lawyers is a business law firm and commercialisation consultancy serving clients internationally since 2000. Our core business is adding value to each client’s intellectual property, innovation, content, digital assets and technology.

10/02/2025

[ case study ] I had a delightful meeting recently. A 20-something employee skilled in Large Language Models for AI sought a meeting to discuss becoming a consultant. We met at a coffee shop. During the two-hour session we discussed the printouts I tabled. Electronic copies of most are included here.

Note the nature of the following five tools used for the practical advice and consultancy I provided, involving law and business know-how.

1. Graphic - From advice to collaboration
2. Numbered list of talking points - What's involved in "taking instructions" today?
3. Diagram - Your innovation, your team and work of multidisciplinary advisers
4. Template agreement, form format - Consultancy Services (Public Relations) Agreement
5. Template agreement - Consultancy Services Agt [Letter Format; Consultant

Unsurprisingly, item 5's nitty gritty clause titled "Fees Basis" was the emotional high point of our meeting. The clause sets out the following nine options for a consultant to set the consultancy fees to be charged:

• Fees quote
• Fees estimate
• Fees stage by stage and fixed
• Fees initial work quote
• Fees estimate and time-based rates
• Fees retainer
• Commission
• Variable hourly rates
• Royalties

30/12/2024

to avoid in 2025. Your thoughts?

27/11/2024

digital doppelgangers | A well-written article on two everything monotone women living on Amazon affiliate links and in a court case against each other for copying (aka ).

Behind the scenes of a court battle for the “clean girl” look.