Using AI in legal and professional work
In England and Wales, a Divisional Court has heard cases arising from the actual or suspected use by lawyers of generative AI tools to produce written legal arguments or witness statements that were not then checked, so that false information, typically a fake citation or quotation, was put before the court (judgment).
What courts' guidance says
- AI tools can make things up. Judicial guidance in England and Wales warns that AI tools may make up fictitious cases, citations or quotes, refer to legislation, articles or legal texts that do not exist, provide incorrect or misleading information about the law, and make factual errors (judicial guidance).
- Check before you rely on it. The accuracy of any information provided by an AI tool must be checked before it is used or relied upon (judicial guidance).
- You remain responsible. All legal representatives are responsible for the material they put before the court or tribunal and have a professional obligation to ensure it is accurate and appropriate; litigants without a lawyer are also responsible for what they put to the court (judicial guidance).
- Keep private information out of public chatbots. Do not enter into a public AI chatbot any information that is private or confidential or not already in the public domain; anything you put into one should be seen as being published to all the world (judicial guidance).
- Chatbots are not reliable for legal research. The Divisional Court said that freely available generative AI tools are not capable of conducting reliable legal research: they may cite sources that do not exist, or purport to quote passages from a genuine source that do not appear in that source (judgment).
Practical checks
- Check against authoritative sources. The court said those who use AI for legal research have a professional duty to check its accuracy by reference to authoritative sources, such as the government's database of legislation, the National Archives database of court judgments and the official law reports (judgment).
- Look out for warning signs. The judicial guidance lists indications that work may have been produced by AI, including references to cases that do not sound familiar or have unfamiliar citations (sometimes from the US), and submissions that do not accord with a general understanding of the law in the area (judicial guidance).
- Watch for hidden text. So-called "white text" consists of hidden prompts or concealed text inserted into a document so as to be visible to a computer but not to a human reader (judicial guidance).
- Be ready to explain your checks. The guidance says judges may need to confirm that lawyers have independently verified the accuracy of any research or case citations generated with the assistance of an AI chatbot, and, where a litigant without a lawyer may have used one to prepare documents, to ask what checks for accuracy have been undertaken (judicial guidance).
Sources
- Judgment of the Divisional Court on the use of generative AI by lawyers, handed down by release to The National Archives on 6 June 2025.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Judicial Guidance (October 2025), Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, 31 October 2025; full guidance for judicial office holders (PDF).