HM Courts and Tribunals Service has published updated guidance for Judicial Office Holders on the use of tools which use artificial intelligence. The guidance, which replaces the previously published document from April 2025, reminds office holders of the principle of personal responsibility for any material produced in their name said Lord Justice Birss, Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence.
In recent months courts have had to deal with, and admonished, individuals who have used artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini tool and Apple’s Siri, in court. High profile cases involving precedents which simply don’t exist have been reported, with the guidance also warning
“AI chatbots are now being used by unrepresented litigants. They may be the only source of advice or assistance some litigants receive. Litigants rarely have the skills independently to verify legal information provided by AI chatbots and may not be aware that they are prone to error.”
Judicial post holders are advised raise enquiries where there is suspicion of the use of AI, to verify what checks for accuracy have been undertaken (if any), and ‘inform the litigant that they are responsible for what they put to the court/tribunal.’
Those using AI are advised to ensure they have a ‘basic understanding’ of the capabilities and potential limitations of AI, pointing out public AI chatbots do not provide answers from authoritative databases.
“As with any other information available on the internet in general, AI tools may be useful to find material you would recognise as correct but have not got to hand, but are a poor way of conducting research to find new information you cannot verify. They may be best seen as a way of obtaining non-definitive confirmation of something, rather than providing immediately correct facts. The quality of any answers you receive will depend on how you engage with the relevant AI tool, including the nature of the prompts you enter, and the quality of the underlying datasets. These may include misinformation (whether deliberate or otherwise), selective data, or data that is not up to date. Even with the best prompts, the information provided may be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or biased. It must be borne in mind that “wrong” answers are not infrequent.”
The guidance goes on to note much of the output is drawn from information openly available on the internet; ‘their “view” of the law is often based heavily on US and historic law, although some do purport to be able to distinguish between that and the law of England and Wales.’ It also warns of examples of AI ‘hallucinating’ and simply making up cases and precedents where none exist.
Post holders are also reminded not to insert confidential information into AI as it will use that information in responses to similar queries from other people, potentially breaching confidentiality. In the event of unintentional disclosure of confidential or private information the leadership judge and the Judicial Office should be contacted. Where the disclosure involves personal details, it should be reported as a data incident.
Commenting on the updated guidance, Lord Justice Birss, Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence, said:
“The use of AI by the judiciary must be consistent with its overarching obligation to protect the integrity of the administration of justice and uphold the rule of law. I welcome the publication of the latest AI Guidance, which reinforces this principle and the personal responsibility judicial office holders have for all material produced in their name. I encourage all judicial office holders to read the guidance and apply it with care.”
The updated guidance applies to all judicial office holders for whom the Lady Chief Justice and Senior President of Tribunals are responsible, their clerks, judicial assistants, legal advisers/officers and other support staff and can be found on the HMCTS website.
