Forum-Aware Disclosure Router for Brisbane Boutique Firms: Match the AI-Use Disclosure to the Forum Before You File

You run a six-lawyer boutique in Brisbane. This week you have a witness statement going into the Administrative Review Tribunal, a Federal Court interlocutory application, and a commercial dispute in the Queensland Supreme Court. Each forum has its own expectations about disclosing the use of generative AI in preparing documents — and the expectations are not the same. Your junior used Copilot to tidy a chronology; your migration agent colleague used a summarisation tool on country information. Whose disclosure obligation kicks in, in which matter, on which form? The Forum-Aware Disclosure Router is built so a boutique team doesn’t have to keep that matrix in its head.

The problem

A boutique firm doesn’t have a litigation support unit or a knowledge-management partner. The same solicitor who drafts the affidavit also files it — and is the one personally responsible for the AI-use disclosure that goes with it. The forums you appear in have moved at different speeds:

• The Federal Court of Australia’s GPN-AI sets out specific expectations about generative AI use in proceedings, including the practitioner’s responsibility for verifying citations and authorities.
• The Administrative Review Tribunal publishes practice directions and other guidance for professionals and practitioners covering expert evidence and conduct of proceedings before it.
• State Supreme Courts, including Queensland’s, set their own rules and practice directions which evolve independently.
• The Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules sit underneath all of this, particularly Rule 19 (candour to the court) and Rule 32 (avoiding misleading conduct).

For a boutique, the failure mode isn’t ignorance of any one rule — it’s pulling last month’s Federal Court disclosure template into an ART matter, or filing a Supreme Court document with a disclosure paragraph drafted for a different forum entirely. The result is the same either way: an inconsistent record across your matters, and a partner explaining at a directions hearing why the disclosure doesn’t match the forum.

What the Forum-Aware Disclosure Router does

The Forum-Aware Disclosure Router takes a filing draft plus a small set of structured inputs (forum, matter type, whether AI was used and how) and routes the matter to the correct compliance disclosure template for that forum. It does not generate novel disclosure language — it selects, populates, and flags. Specifically:

• It identifies the forum (Federal Court, ART, Queensland Supreme Court, Federal Circuit and Family Court, High Court) from your input or from cues in the draft.
• It applies the disclosure template that matches that forum’s current practice direction or general practice note.
• It flags any mismatch — e.g., a Federal Court citation block in a draft you’ve tagged as an ART matter.
• It produces a per-filing disclosure record you can archive alongside the matter file.

The deliverable is operational, not advisory. You still sign the document; the router stops you signing the wrong one.

How it works

1. Upload the draft. A .txt or .md filing draft is submitted to the router along with the forum, matter reference, and a short structured declaration of which AI tools (if any) were used in preparation.
2. Forum classification. The router confirms the forum from your declaration and from internal cues in the document (case number format, party styling, court header).
3. Template selection. The router selects the disclosure template mapped to that forum’s current practice direction or general practice note.
4. Population and mismatch flagging. The template is populated from your declaration. Any inconsistency between the declared forum, the document cues, and the AI-use declaration is flagged for review before output.
5. Disclosure record output. You receive a markdown disclosure record sized for inclusion in the filing or for filing alongside it, plus an audit-log entry for the matter file.

The router runs deterministically on your machine. Filing content is not sent to external LLMs for inference.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Brisbane boutiques have an unusually wide forum footprint for their headcount. A migration-and-administrative-law practice will be in the ART one day and the Federal Court the next. A commercial boutique will move between the Queensland Supreme Court and federal jurisdiction in the same matter. The Administrative Review Tribunal’s practice directions and guidance for practitioners set forum-specific expectations that are not interchangeable with Federal Court practice — and as both forums update their guidance, the gap between templates grows. For a small team without dedicated compliance infrastructure, a router that locks the disclosure to the forum is the cheapest insurance against a Rule 19 candour problem reaching a directions hearing.

Sources

• Administrative Review Tribunal — Practice directions and other guidance for professionals and practitioners: https://www.art.gov.au/help-and-resources/professionals-and-practitioners/practice-directions-and-other-guidance
• Federal Court of Australia — Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Practice Note (GPN-AI): https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/law-and-practice/practice-documents/practice-notes/gpn-ai
• Federal Court of Australia — Rules, Acts & Regulations: https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/law-and-practice/rules-acts-and-regulations
• Law Council of Australia — Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules: https://lawcouncil.au/policy-agenda/regulation-of-the-profession-and-ethics/australian-solicitors-conduct-rules

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — be the first to know when the Forum-Aware Disclosure Router opens for Brisbane boutique firms

The Forum-Aware Disclosure Router is in build. We’re scoping pricing (per-filing, per-user monthly, or boutique firm-licence) based on demand from teams under ten lawyers. Join the waitlist and what we hear from you will shape how the tier you sit in actually works.