The Civil Justice Council has now said where it thinks the rules on AI in court documents should land. The final report of its working group, chaired by Sir Colin Birss, the incoming Master of the Rolls, is dated 29 October 2026. If your firm drafts for the civil courts, the parts to watch are the witness statement and the expert report.
It makes fifteen recommendations, most of them to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, which writes the rules, with others to the legal regulators and to the council itself. On statements of case, skeleton arguments, disclosure and translation it confirms the line the working group took in its interim report. On witness statements it changes who gives the declaration, and on expert reports it narrows what has to be declared.
Your own drafting stays your responsibility
For statements of case, skeleton arguments and other written advocacy, the report recommends no AI declaration of any kind. You would not have to tell the court which tools you used, and no new rule would make you ask the court's permission to use one. The working group concluded that a declaration about the tool would not of itself make the content more reliable, and risked satellite litigation over what counts as an AI tool.
The duty stays where it was. The legal representative whose name is on the document answers for its accuracy and for every citation in it. The report also asks for a practice direction, written in plain language, that gathers the case law on AI misuse and its sanctions in one place and confirms, so far as needed, that the specific professional taking responsibility must be identified. Disclosure is left alone for now, subject to the separate review of the disclosure rules already under way.
Witnesses of fact will sign for their own words
The interim report proposed that the legal representative should declare that AI had not been used to generate or influence a trial witness statement. The final report puts the declaration on the witness instead and extends it to every statement of fact, whether or not it is for trial. Each witness of fact would state that AI used in preparing the statement has not generated or influenced its substantive content, whether the party has a lawyer or acts in person.
The two verbs carry the weight. Generating content means producing or modifying it, whether or not anyone intended the tool to do so. Influencing it means affecting how the content is selected, analysed, developed or evaluated without producing it. The report says AI that embellishes, strengthens or otherwise alters the evidence can be viewed as analogous to witness coaching, which is impermissible. It bans no tool, and a transcription that reproduces what the witness said accurately raises no concern. A statement a legal representative prepares and signs for a procedural or interim purpose, rather than as a witness of fact, needs no declaration, and the representative stays responsible for its accuracy.
Experts and translations
An expert whose use of AI generated or influenced the substance of a report would have to declare it. The declaration would give the other side and the court enough to test the method, and would name the tool where that is necessary for the purpose. Use that leaves the substance untouched needs no declaration. Translations would still need certifying by a professional human translator, and an AI translation should travel with the original text so that the other side and the court can check it. The report asks for Part 32 and its practice direction to say in terms that certification applies to any use of an AI translation tool.
What to change now
These are recommendations. The rule committee has to draft the practice direction and amend the rules, and the report sets no date for either. The Irish High Court already requires a declaration of this kind, as set out in AI declarations in court documents now in force. The report calls the Irish practice direction a sound model for the form the guidance might take, while noting that its own approach reaches wider than generative AI.
Take each statement from the witness's own account and keep your notes or the recording, so that you can show where every paragraph came from. Tell your fee earners that no general assistant should polish, strengthen or reorder a witness's evidence, even where the result reads better. Raise the proposed declaration at the first interview, because a witness who has already run their account through a chatbot needs to tell you now rather than under cross-examination. Ask experts about their use of AI in the letter of instruction, the point made in AI allegations against experts.
The Civil Justice Council publishes the final report, Use of AI for Preparing Court Documents, as a free PDF of 50 pages that opens without registration.
If you want to think through how your witness statement process would stand up to the proposed declaration before the rule committee acts, talk it through with us.
