The Supreme Court of Victoria has issued a Practice Note1 with guidelines for the responsible use of artificial intelligence ('AI') in the preparation of Court documents by Court users such as lawyers, litigants, and lay and expert witnesses. This Practice Note commenced on 14 May 2026.
Court users would have to be aware of the following obligations when using AI.
Duties Imposed on All Court Users
- Court users are responsible for the content of their Court documents, whether or not AI has been utilised;
- Court users must ensure that their use of AI does not directly or indirectly mislead another participant in the litigation process or the Court, about the nature of the work undertaken or the content produced;
- Court users in civil proceedings are subject to the obligations imposed by the Civil Procedure Act 2010 (Vic), including the duty to certify that all claims have a proper basis; and
- Court users may be subject to adverse cost orders should a Court document filed by them contain inaccuracies.
Additional Duties Imposed on Lawyers
- The duty of lawyers to act with competence and diligence, and to provide independent advice, extends to their use of AI tools, such that they must exercise oversight and verify the accuracy and suitability of the information provided by any AI system;
- Obligations of lawyers in the conduct of litigation, such as the obligation of candour to the Court and other relevant impositions in the Civil Procedure Act 2010 (Vic), continue to apply; and
- Lawyers may be subject to personal costs orders and being referred to the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner if they rely on unverified AI outputs in Court documents.
Duties Pertaining to Privacy
- Court users must ensure that confidential or sensitive information is not entered into a public AI tool (tools openly accessible to the public); and
- The obligations of lawyers to maintain client confidentiality continue to apply.
Duties Pertaining to Preparation of Evidence
- Court users must exercise caution when using generative AI (software systems that generate content as text, images, music, audio and videos, based on a user’s prompts) in preparing affidavit materials, witness statements or other documents which form evidence or potential evidence of a witness;
- Court users must ensure that the form in which Court documents are sworn/affirmed or finalised reflects the user’s own knowledge and words; and
- Expert reports must still be prepared in compliance with the relevant Expert Witness Code of Conduct or Practice Note.
Requirements to Verify
- Court users must verify content produced using AI with meaningful human control;
- Court users must ensure that content produced by AI is current, complete, accurate and applicable to the jurisdiction;
- Court users must be alert to the risk of bias and discrimination when reviewing AI outputs;
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In order to ensure the accuracy of material produced using generative AI, court users must:
- fact-check and proofread;
- edit and adapt the content to suit the situation;
- verify the existence of case law, legislation, textbooks or articles that are referenced, and ensure that they support the legal positions attributed to them (the Practice Note recommends using reliable sources like AustLII and the resources available from the Law Library Victoria);
- verify the accuracy of extracts or quotes that are referenced, and ensure that they are attributed to the correct source (the Practice Note recommends using reliable sources like AustLII and the resources available from the Law Library Victoria); and
- not ask an AI tool to confirm whether the materials exist or contain the content that the generative AI says they do and one AI tool cannot be used to confirm the content generated by another AI tool; and
- Court users must be prepared to identify and explain how the output in specific portions of Court documents produced using AI was verified.
Footnotes
1 See link here