Practice Direction HC 142: what the AI declaration means

Practice Direction HC 142 is the High Court’s rule on generative AI in court documents. Since 1 September 2026, every affidavit and witness statement opens with a new sentence: the deponent declares that AI did not produce the substance of the evidence. Experts make a similar declaration.

The other half of the text gets far less attention: what a firm feeds into a tool before anyone drafts. I read HC 142 as a rule about inputs as much as outputs. If your office hasn’t settled which tools are allowed at all, our page for Irish solicitors comes first.

High Court Practice Direction 142: dates, scope and the paragraphs that matter

Mr Justice David Barniville signed HC 142 as President of the High Court on 29 July 2026, and it came into operation on 1 September. It covers civil proceedings and binds everyone in them, litigants in person included. The Courts Service announced it on 31 August, together with the Court of Appeal’s CA16.

Paragraph 3 is the one people misread. The direction reaches proceedings issued before September as well as after; what counts is when the document was prepared. A replying affidavit sworn this week in a 2022 personal injuries action needs the declaration. An old file number is no exemption.

Most of that table is about what comes out of a tool. Paragraphs 10 and 32 are about what goes in, and they decide what a chatbot such as ChatGPT gets to keep from a litigation file.

The AI declaration in an affidavit: the exact wording

Paragraph 27 fixes the words. Unless the court directs otherwise, the declaration sits in one of the opening paragraphs of an affidavit or witness statement, and the deponent makes it personally, not the firm. The version below follows paragraph 27, with one word taken from the Courts Service’s guide for people who aren’t lawyers.

A small point for whoever keeps the firm’s precedents. HC 142, CA16, CC34 and DC32 on courts.ie all read “by way or altering”, a slip; the Courts Service guide has “by way of”. My template would carry “of”, since paragraph 27 itself allows the form to be “amended or adapted as appropriate”.

Paragraph 17 carries the companion duty. The solicitor explains the duty to the court, and the deponent has to understand that the truth of the affidavit is theirs. A draft that has gone back and forth with the client in Word also keeps every earlier wording until someone clears the tracked changes.

Can solicitors use AI on affidavits? What paragraph 28 allows

Paragraph 28 carves out administrative or ancillary use unconnected to the substance, and names formatting and spell checking. At the Law Society Litigation Committee conference on 15 October 2026, Ms Justice Eileen Roberts added that the direction isn’t meant to stop AI formatting or transcribing verified source documents, according to the Gazette’s report.

The five verbs in paragraph 27 are where people get caught. Altering, embellishing, strengthening, diluting and rephrasing are what a fee earner asks a tool to do with a client’s rough account, without calling it generating anything. A Word assistant offering a smoother sentence sits on the wrong side.

When a request feels borderline, keep the tool off the body of the evidence and use it on the frame: the backsheet, the index, the exhibit list. If that frame carries the client’s PPS number, what a PPSN is in Irish law deserves five minutes before it goes anywhere.

And if it’s the draft itself you want to send somewhere, redact the Word file properly first, because a black box drawn over text in Word often leaves the words underneath.

Using AI in court without a solicitor: the Courts Service guide

People representing themselves are bound by HC 142 as much as any firm, and they are the ones most likely to reach for a free chatbot. The Courts Service wrote for them first: “Using AI to prepare documents for court”, published on 12 February 2026, also covers McKenzie friends and anyone helping a party.

On affidavits it is blunter than the direction. AI must not generate the content of an affidavit or witness statement, the witness confirms that formally, and the same opening declaration applies. Before pasting a letter from the other side or a medical report into a free account, strip out the personal data that adds nothing.

Expert reports, pleadings and submissions under HC 142

Expert reports get their own regime in paragraphs 29 to 31. The report opens with a declaration that AI wasn’t used for the substantive content “save as otherwise expressly stated”, and any material use in drafting, analysing or interpreting has to be described well enough for the court to weigh reliability and independence.

Pleadings and submissions carry no declaration: paragraph 22 says using AI doesn’t by itself require disclosure. They carry a verification duty instead. Paragraph 23 covers pleaded facts, reliefs, authorities and chronologies, paragraph 24 every citation and quotation, and paragraph 13 rules out using one chatbot to check another.

If I were instructing an expert, the letter of instruction would ask them to state in the report whether and how they used AI. It costs one line and spares everyone an argument at hearing. For the firm’s own people, the same expectation belongs in a written AI policy.

CA16, CC34 and DC32: AI practice directions in the other Irish courts

The High Court didn’t move first. Earlier this year, in Guerin v O’Doherty, a litigant in person used AI to draft submissions to the Court of Appeal, and Ms Justice Costello set down guiding principles: whoever uses AI for research answers for the result and has to check it independently.

The Court of Appeal’s CA16, signed on 11 August, came in with HC 142 on 1 September and says it aligns with it. The Circuit Court’s CC34 took effect on 21 September, and DC32, issued by Paul Kelly as President of the District Court, on 2 November 2026. Both cover civil and criminal cases.

The two lower-court texts are shorter and stricter. They say AI shouldn’t be used to prepare affidavits or evidence beyond administrative tasks, want AI use on submissions acknowledged in the submission itself, and give a party one working day to fix a problem before the court hears of it.

Both lower-court texts also warn about the in camera rule. Family affidavits often hold health details, sexuality or religion, and a school or a parish can identify a party without a name. I wouldn’t put an in camera file through any outside tool, licence or no licence.

Discovery documents and the implied undertaking: paragraph 32

Paragraph 32 is the only part of HC 142 phrased as a prohibition. Where documents, discovery included, are covered by a court order or an express or implied undertaking, AI tools shouldn’t be used on them if that would involve, or risk, disclosure contrary to the order or undertaking. CC34 and DC32 repeat it.

Safe Use Patterns by Practice Area, a 2026 Law Society resource built with Acuity AI Advisory, approves summarising discovery documents for internal use, with the other side’s documents kept to enterprise tools. Beside paragraph 32, that permission reads narrowly to me: it says which tool, not whether the undertaking allows it.

Whether a firm-licensed tool with retention switched off still “creates a risk” turns on the terms of each undertaking, a matter for counsel on the file. This page reads the direction; it isn’t legal advice. Some firms sidestep it for discovery with a private model run in-house, which has costs of its own.

Whether the tool was a personal account or the firm’s Copilot licence changes what the provider may do with the text later. It doesn’t change what the provider read.

Where a file was attached rather than pasted, the provider also received the metadata inside it, from the author’s name to comments nobody remembered leaving.

Legal privilege, confidentiality and why a prompt may be disclosable

Paragraph 10 reads like background, but two of its five risks concern inputs. What goes into an AI tool may be retained, processed or disclosed in ways the user can’t see, and privileged material entered into a tool that isn’t private may lose its protection.

The Courts Service guide for non-lawyers adds that what you enter may have to be disclosed in legal proceedings. A prompt retelling a client’s account, names and sums included, is a document like any other. If your own software routes prompts through an AI gateway that logs every request, that log is one more copy.

The Law Society’s guidance puts privilege with the client, where it belongs, and treats free and paid consumer models as unsuitable for confidential client data by default. On a live matter, my preference is to export a chat history before anyone deletes it, in case it’s ever sought.

The Data Protection Commission told organisations in July 2024 to find out whether a provider retains or re-uses what staff type in. For a litigation team, that answer sits in the plan, and our comparison of four large providers sets it out.

The consumer and Workspace versions of Gemini keep very different things for very different periods, which our guide to Google’s rules goes through.

A firm using Claude should read what Claude does with your conversations before anyone pastes in a pleading.

Sanctions under HC 142: costs orders, strike-out and the LSRA

Paragraphs 35 to 37 set the consequences. A party that doesn’t comply can face adverse costs, documents disregarded in whole or part, or its claim or defence struck out, and the court can weigh AI misuse when it manages the case and decides costs.

Paragraph 36 is aimed at lawyers: referral to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority, whose complaints regime sits in Part 6 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, or to their professional body, plus costs orders against the practitioner personally.

The LSRA counted 16,089 practising lawyers in 2025, 12,961 solicitors and 3,128 barristers, and paragraph 36 reaches every one of them. Ms Justice Roberts told the October conference that a litigant in the Guerin defendant’s position is very unlikely to get the same leniency again. For me, the grace period is over.

If client data reached a tool it shouldn’t have, a separate question can run alongside the costs one: whether that was a personal data breach that has to be logged or reported.

Do you have to disclose AI use to the court, the other side or the client?

It depends who’s asking. In the High Court, paragraph 21 leaves disclosure to the judge’s direction, beyond the declarations, though everyone should be able to answer if asked. The Circuit and District Courts want AI use on submissions acknowledged in the document itself.

The Gazette reported Ms Justice Roberts saying the judges debated mandatory disclosure and found a declaration in every case would be “nonsensical” now that AI is everywhere, and that HC 142 will be adjusted as needed. That makes the firm’s file note worth more than any boilerplate.

A single line on every file is enough to answer a judge under paragraph 21: which tool, which plan, which document, and what for. I’d rather write that note on the day than reconstruct it from a browser history at a directions hearing.

The client row is the one a firm controls from the first letter, through an AI paragraph in the terms of business.

The Law Society also flags that the EU AI Act may bring transparency duties of its own, which our Irish reading of the AI Act covers.

The jurat and the prompt: two checks before anyone signs

The declaration looks at what a tool wrote. Confidentiality, privilege and paragraph 32 look at what it read. A deponent can truthfully swear that AI never touched the evidence while the attendance note, with the client’s mobile number and Eircode, went to a chatbot by one of the usual leak routes.

Nonimo deals with that second check and writes nothing itself. On each fee earner’s PC or Mac, you highlight a passage and press one key: names, PPS numbers, Eircodes, dates of birth, IBANs, mobile numbers and email addresses become labelled markers before you paste. The reply comes back with the details restored.

The Mac app a moment after the keystroke, on an invented affidavit that belongs to nobody. On Windows it looks the same.

The lookup between marker and value stays on that machine, and your text never reaches us.

Firms whose own software calls the OpenAI API can put a proxy on their own servers in front of it instead.

None of this changes what the deponent swears to. If your litigation team already uses a chatbot and the client’s details are what worry you, see how Nonimo works for Irish firms on an affidavit of your own.

Sources

• High Court, Practice Direction HC 142 on the Responsible Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Court Documents, Barniville P, 29 July 2026, in operation 1 September 2026. Paragraphs 3, 10, 13, 17 and 21 to 37.
• District Court, Practice Direction DC32 on the Responsible Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Court Proceedings and Documents, Paul Kelly, President of the District Court, taking effect from 2 November 2026.
• Also on courts.ie: Court of Appeal Practice Direction CA16 (Costello P, 11 August 2026, in operation 1 September 2026); Circuit Court Practice Direction CC34 (Keenan Johnson, President of the Circuit Court, effective 21 September 2026); the Courts Service announcement of 31 August 2026; the Courts Service guide “Using AI to prepare documents for court” (12 February 2026), written for litigants in person and McKenzie friends as well as lawyers.
• Law Society of Ireland, Use of generative artificial intelligence: guidance (2025). Privilege as the client’s; consumer tools and client data; the terms and conditions letter.
• Law Society of Ireland, Safe Use Patterns by Practice Area (2026, developed by Acuity AI Advisory in consultation with the Law Society). The litigation card on discovery and enterprise tools.
• Law Society Gazette, “Judges ‘debated’ mandatory AI disclosure”, 20 October 2026. Remarks of Roberts J on 15 October 2026, and the Court of Appeal’s approach in Guerin v O’Doherty.
• Legal Services Regulatory Authority, Pathways to the Professions report release. 16,089 practising lawyers in 2025.
• Data Protection Commission, AI, Large Language Models and Data Protection, 18 July 2024. Provider retention and reuse of inputs.
• Irish Statute Book, Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. Part 6 on complaints and misconduct.

Checked on 7 November 2026.