UK Civil Justice Council AI Court Documents Consultation — Bar Council and Law Society Responses Move Toward Transparency-Only for Professional Lawyers, Expert Disclosure for AI Methodology

The Civil Justice Council's consultation on AI use in preparing English court documents closed in the spring, and Norton Rose Fulbright's July 2026 analysis of the responses documents the Working Group's direction of travel. The Bar Council and the Law Society both responded in April and May; the consultation attracted high alignment across respondents on the professional drafting question. The Working Group's emerging positions: for legal professionals preparing pleadings, advocacy documents, and skeleton arguments, no additional formal AI requirements beyond existing professional responsibility frameworks are currently considered necessary; for expert evidence, proportionate transparency about what AI was used and how is the proposed requirement, potentially as an amendment to the expert's statement of truth; and the distinct and evolving challenges posed by litigants in person (who are not covered by professional obligations) warrant separate recognition. A leading proposal among respondents would amend the expert's statement of truth to require disclosure of AI methodology — making AI use in litigation formally auditable for the first time and operationalizing the Rule 26/Daubert reasoning the Connecticut federal court applied in May when ordering production of an expert witness's AI prompts (reported in full in The New Legal Frontier briefing for July 20). For law firms in English courts, the practical implication is that expert witness management now requires a standard AI use inquiry and disclosure protocol — even before formal rule changes — because client exposure and relationship risk from undisclosed AI use in expert evidence already exists under professional responsibility.