NSW Supreme Court AI practice note: what you need to do

Practice Note SC Gen 23 decides what generative AI may do in a NSW Supreme Court matter, and it binds self-represented parties as well as lawyers. A paragraph-by-paragraph recital is little use when the affidavit is due at 4pm and someone has already opened a chatbot.

So this page is built around the three calls you have to make: whether your tool counts, whether this material may go in, and whether this document needs a disclosure. Firms after the wider picture of what a litigation file carries can start at our law firms page.

Which version of Practice Note SC Gen 23 applies today

Use the text issued on 28 January 2025, which commenced on 3 February 2025. It replaced the version first issued on 21 November 2024, and the difference bites: commentary from that first round talks about a single paragraph 9, which the amendment split into 9A and 9B.

A review opened in November 2025 and I can’t find a published outcome. Put a recheck of the Court’s page into your AI policy as a step before filing, because a summary of this note, mine included, could go stale the day a new version lands.

Does my tool count as generative AI under the note?

Product names won’t settle it. Paragraph 3 lists ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Co-Pilot, and also Lexis Advance AI, Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core. Paragraph 6 then carves out functions, so the question is what this feature did to your words.

Paragraph 4 catches open-source models too, which means running one on your own server doesn’t take you outside the note. Open source isn’t the same as maintained either: LLM Guard, an open-source LLM security toolkit, is now archived.

One overlap is untidy. Paragraph 3 names AI Media and Read AI as examples, while paragraph 6 excludes transcription. My reading is that a plain transcript is out and the summary the same app adds is in, though the note doesn’t spell that out.

Can subpoena, Harman or suppressed material go into an AI tool?

Paragraph 9A overrides the permissions in 9B. A chronology is allowed only if the documents feeding it were allowed in. The duty sits with the practitioner or person responsible for the conduct of the proceeding, and if you’re self-represented that’s you.

The record of what you typed is a problem of its own. Deleting the chat won’t undo the upload, as our guide to clearing ChatGPT history explains, and the NSW Bar Association warns that AI inputs and outputs may themselves be obtained by subpoena or regulator’s notice.

The Privacy Act adds its own layer for personal information in the same file, including when the provider is overseas: see the Privacy Act guide.

If protected material has already gone in, this data breach guide deals with what comes next.

What an enterprise AI platform must promise under paragraph 9A

These conditions describe where the material goes and what the supplier may do with it. A consumer chatbot with training switched on fails before anyone types. An enterprise service might pass, so read the contract, never the sales page: our Copilot guide goes through one line by line.

Plans differ within a single brand, as our Gemini guide shows for workplace accounts.

ChatGPT works the same way, under OpenAI’s rules, account by account. Tick only what you could show a judge in writing.

Where a firm runs its own tools, that environment includes whatever an AI gateway logs on the way to the model.

Hosting a model yourself is another route to the same test, and this comparison of a private LLM and a privacy proxy covers when that’s worth the bother.

Does removing names make subpoena material safe for AI?

On the wording of paragraph 9A, I don’t think so, though I can’t find a ruling either way. Labelled payroll records still look like material produced on subpoena. Taking identifiers out does help with ordinary client confidences, and what still identifies someone once the numbers are gone is worth reading first.

We ran the test on an invented file note of the kind a litigation solicitor might want turned into a timeline. The After is what Nonimo returned, with nothing edited by hand.

That apprentice is still identifiable, and the note still says subpoena. On my reading of paragraph 9A it could go only to a platform meeting every condition, labels or no labels. Our NDIS case note guide works through the same habit of reading what a story gives away.

A real file note kept in Word can carry more than its page shows, such as an address deleted with Track Changes on.

Do I need an AI disclosure in this affidavit, witness statement or expert report?

Paragraph 13 sets the disclosure for three kinds of document and paragraph 14 narrows it for annexures. Submissions get a verification instead, and expert reports start with an application for leave.

Paragraph 10 permits work “merely preparatory” to drafting, while the disclosure speaks to content. My reading: an AI chronology used to prepare a proof needn’t stop an honest disclosure, if nothing it wrote reaches the witness’s words. The note doesn’t say so in terms, so check with the solicitor on the record.

Paragraph 22’s record of prompts and settings is a fair test of any setup. A chatbot’s history isn’t an annexure, and how long it survives depends on the plan, as our note on what Claude keeps shows.

Practice note SC Gen 23 example: disclosure wording you can adapt

The note sets the content and leaves the words to you. These drafts stay close to its own language. They’re my wording, not the Court’s, and a solicitor should settle them for your document.

A friend writing a character reference won’t have heard of any of this, and the requirement still lands on their page. Give them the sentence and ask how they wrote the reference before they sign.

Clean the final file as well, since tracked changes left in a Word draft carry deleted wording into every copy.

Can a self-represented party or a junior use ChatGPT for court documents?

They can, inside the same limits, and May v Costaras [2025] NSWCA 178 is the case to read. A self-represented respondent’s list of authorities included Tate v Ragg, with pinpoint paragraphs. No such case exists. Bell CJ assumed AI had produced it and called that a matter of profound concern.

Bell CJ also said at [15] that unrepresented litigants are subject to SC Gen 23 even if they don’t know its terms, and at [16] that a judge may legitimately ask whether AI was used.

Have your answer ready. Nobody gets a pass for not knowing, which strikes me as fair.

Local Court, Land and Environment Court, SC Gen 25: other courts’ AI rules

The Local Court adopted SC Gen 23 from 12 January 2026, as amended from time to time, so a character reference for a Local Court sentence hearing works to the same paragraph 13.

The Land and Environment Court trips people up through old commentary. Its first note, signed 28 November 2024, had a flat ban in paragraph 9 with no platform conditions. The version in force since 12 February 2025 follows SC Gen 23, 9A and 9B included, so check which text an article was quoting.

If you end up filing a redacted copy in any of them, drawn boxes aren’t enough, as this guide to redacting a PDF explains.

My order of work for SC Gen 23: sort the file, sign last

The disclosure takes one sentence and describes one document on one day. Paragraph 9A covers every tool anyone opened in the weeks before, and nothing in the signed page shows it. Sort documents when they arrive, because nobody does it later.

The guides on using AI with client data take the platform question tool by tool.

For the client material that’s allowed out, our Australian page shows how selecting a chronology brief and pressing a key swaps the identifiers Nonimo recognises for labels, on the Mac or Windows computer holding the file. Every change is shown and can be undone.

Your text never reaches us, as the security page sets out.

A practice comparing options can see the plans.

Sources

• Supreme Court of NSW, Practice Note SC Gen 23, issued 28 January 2025, with its amendment history.
• Supreme Court of NSW, Generative AI page, last updated 23 March 2026: the review, the Chief Justice’s statement of 17 November 2025 and the announcement of amendments.
• Law Society of NSW, A solicitor’s guide to responsible use of artificial intelligence, updated January 2026: rule 9, Harman, Dayal, Mata and Murray.
• Law Society of NSW, Court Protocols on AI, dated 14 May 2026: the list of courts and their documents.
• NSW Bar Association, Issues Arising from the Use of AI Language Models, 12 July 2023: inputs and outputs reachable by subpoena.
• Supreme Court of Victoria, SC Gen 25, 14 May 2026: paragraphs 1.5, 6.8, 6.9 and 7.6.
• Supreme Court of Queensland, Practice Direction 5 of 2025: paragraphs 5, 6 and 14.
• UNSW Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession, Practice notes and guidance from Australian courts and legal regulators, March 2026: SC Gen 23 listed as under review.
• May v Costaras [2025] NSWCA 178, 8 August 2025.
• Local Court of NSW, Practice Note on Generative Artificial Intelligence, issued 12 December 2025.
• Land and Environment Court of NSW, Practice Note on Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence, signed 11 February 2025, commencing 12 February 2025, replacing the version signed 28 November 2024.

Accessed 7 November 2026.