Forum-Aware Disclosure Router for Perth Boutique Firms: The Right AI-Use Disclosure for the Right Forum, Every Time
Your eight-lawyer Perth firm runs matters across the Administrative Review Tribunal, the Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of Western Australia in the same week. Each forum now expects a different shape of AI-use disclosure — and the partner reviewing tomorrow’s ART expert report bundle is the same partner who signed a Federal Court submission yesterday. There is no in-house knowledge management team to maintain a disclosure matrix. The Forum-Aware Disclosure Router routes each filing to the correct compliance template for the forum it’s actually going to.
The problem
The Administrative Review Tribunal’s Practice Directions and guidance for professionals and practitioners set expectations around expert evidence and the conduct of representatives appearing before the Tribunal. The Federal Court of Australia’s General Practice Note on AI (GPN-AI) imposes a different set of expectations on practitioners filing in that jurisdiction. State Supreme Courts — including the Supreme Court of Western Australia — are publishing their own guidance, and the requirements do not line up cleanly across forums. For a boutique firm running a mixed practice, the operational risk isn’t ignorance of any single rule. It’s forum-confusion: applying the Federal Court template to an ART matter, or attaching no disclosure at all because the matter sat in the wrong folder. The Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules (Rule 19, candour to the court) treat the resulting non-compliance as the practitioner’s responsibility regardless of which template was meant to apply.
What the Forum-Aware Disclosure Router does
The Forum-Aware Disclosure Router is a pre-lodgement routing agent. You point it at a draft filing and tell it which forum the document is bound for — Federal Court, ART, Supreme Court of WA, Federal Circuit and Family Court, or another listed jurisdiction. The agent selects the correct AI-use disclosure template for that forum, populates the fields that can be inferred from the draft (whether AI was used in research, drafting, or summarisation; which sections were AI-assisted), and returns a forum-appropriate disclosure block ready for partner review. It does not generate substantive legal content. It routes — and it records the routing decision so you have an audit trail showing why a particular template was used for a particular filing.
How it works
- Upload the draft — a
.txtor.mdfiling draft via the RuleCheck interface. - Select the forum — the agent loads the disclosure template aligned to that forum’s current practice direction (e.g., the ART Practice Directions for Tribunal matters, GPN-AI for Federal Court matters).
- Inference pass — the agent scans the draft for markers of AI-assisted content (per the metadata or flags your team adds during drafting) and pre-fills the disclosure fields where it can.
- Template output — a forum-specific disclosure block is returned in markdown, ready to be reviewed by the responsible solicitor and pasted into the filing.
- Audit entry — the routing decision, the template version, and the forum selection are logged so the firm can demonstrate, after the fact, why each filing carried the disclosure it did.
Why this matters in Perth
A Perth boutique often handles a Federal Court application, a Tribunal review, and a State Supreme Court matter inside the same fortnight, often through the same two or three partners. There is no compliance officer between the drafter and the filing. The cost of getting the disclosure wrong falls on the signing solicitor under ASCR Rule 19, and on the firm under the relevant practice direction. The Tribunal’s Practice Directions set the expectations for representatives appearing before the ART and for expert evidence; the Federal Court’s GPN-AI sets a different set for filings in that jurisdiction. A small firm running a mixed practice needs the disclosure to follow the forum, not the drafter’s memory of last week’s matter.
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
- Law Council of Australia — Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules: https://lawcouncil.au/policy-agenda/regulation-of-the-profession-and-ethics/australian-solicitors-conduct-rules
- Federal Court of Australia — Rules, Acts & Regulations: https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/law-and-practice/rules-acts-and-regulations
Exegesis capability references:
Join the waitlist
We’re scoping pricing for small firms running mixed Federal, Tribunal, and State practice. Join the waitlist and tell us which forums you file in most often — we’ll prioritise template coverage based on what we hear.