Treat AI transparency as part of expert evidence

Legal Futures reports that the Civil Justice Council has recommended declaring the use of AI in preparing witness statements and expert reports to the court. Later, Law Society Gazette, top stories reports that expert witnesses should not wait for new rules that will mandate transparency: the Business and Property Division’s interim deputy urged experts to start telling the court about AI use at a conference.

The significance is procedural rather than technological. The recommendation places AI use in witness and expert evidence within the court’s view, while the judicial warning presses for that visibility before a mandatory rule arrives. Courts therefore become part of the delivery system for AI-assisted legal work: they can determine whether use is disclosed, when disclosure occurs and what later rules require. That is the institutional channel through which cheaper preparation can produce different litigation incentives.

The event proves that the Civil Justice Council has recommended disclosure and that a senior judicial figure has urged experts to act before new transparency rules take effect. It does not prove that a binding requirement is already in force, that every expert witness is disclosing AI use or that disclosure has changed the cost or volume of litigation. The stronger reading would require an enacted rule, a court direction applying it, or an observable change in filings or evidence. The recommendation and the conference warning establish movement toward court-supervised transparency, not the outcome of that movement.

That distinction matters because transparency can either constrain or normalise AI use in evidence, depending on what courts do with the information. A declaration requirement could make preparation practices reviewable. If disclosure carries no procedural consequence, it may instead become a routine label attached to expert reports and witness statements. Neither direction follows from the recommendation alone. The effect depends on the procedure that implements it and on the incentives facing the people who prepare and submit evidence.

The next confirming fact is a new rule that mandates transparency, a court direction requiring an expert or witness to declare AI use, or a filed witness statement or expert report that makes such use visible. A sanction or other procedural response tied to a missing declaration would show that disclosure affects conduct rather than merely describing it. We will treat those concrete steps as the test of whether court procedure is shaping the consequences of AI-assisted evidence.