In-Draft Compliance Nudge Agent for Sydney Boutique Firms: Catch AI Disclosure Gaps and Dubious Citations While You’re Still Drafting

You run a six-lawyer practice in Surry Hills. You don’t have a dedicated risk partner; you don’t have a knowledge management team; you have a shared Word template, a busy Monday, and an Administrative Review Tribunal hearing on Thursday. One of your juniors used a chatbot to redraft a paragraph in an expert witness brief. You’ll catch it at the proof — probably. The In-Draft Compliance Nudge Agent is built so you don’t have to rely on “probably”. It flags missing AI disclosure, dubious citations, and privilege risks while the draft is still open.

Why it matters now

The Administrative Review Tribunal’s practice directions and guidance for professionals and practitioners set out how proceedings are conducted before the ART, including expectations around expert evidence and the material practitioners place before the Tribunal. The Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules require solicitors to be candid with the court and tribunal (Rule 19) and to maintain client confidentiality (Rule 9). When generative AI is used during drafting — to summarise an expert report, polish a submission, or draft a chronology — three failure modes recur in boutique practice: a citation that doesn’t exist, an AI use that should have been disclosed but wasn’t, and a paste-back into a public model that leaked privileged content. None of these are theoretical, and the cost of catching them at lodgement (or worse, after) is disproportionate for a small firm: a single referral to the OLSC or an adverse costs comment from the bench has a different weight when you don’t have ten partners to spread it across.

The 5-minute view

Boutique firms run lean: drafting, review, and risk sit on the same desk, often the same hour
AI assistance is in the workflow whether it’s formally adopted or not — juniors use it, partners use it, clients send AI-generated material in
Three drafting-stage risks dominate: undisclosed AI use where disclosure is expected, hallucinated or mis-cited authorities, and inadvertent privilege exposure when content is pasted into external tools
The In-Draft Compliance Nudge Agent watches the draft as it’s being written and surfaces these as inline nudges, not a post-hoc audit
Nudges are advisory — the lawyer decides what to act on; the agent records what was flagged and what was resolved
Runs locally; draft content is not transmitted to external LLMs

What Exegesis is building

The In-Draft Compliance Nudge Agent is part of the RuleCheck family by Exegesis — the open-source pre-lodgement filing checker for Australian legal teams (github.com/andrefabre/rulecheck). Where the Citation Verification Agent runs at the pre-lodgement gate, the Nudge Agent runs earlier: in the draft itself. It looks for three classes of signal — citation strings that don’t resolve to an authority registry entry, drafting patterns consistent with AI-generated text in contexts where the ART or court expects disclosure under its AI guidance, and content combinations that indicate a privilege-sensitive passage about to be exported. The verification logic is deterministic and local. The agent does not generate legal content, does not auto-edit the draft, and does not transmit content off-device.

The deliverable

Live, inline nudges while drafting: missing AI disclosure, unresolved citations, privilege-risk passages before lodgement
Per-flag context: which rule or practice direction the nudge relates to (e.g., ART expert evidence guidance, ASCR Rule 19, ASCR Rule 9)
Dismiss-with-reason workflow so the firm builds an audit trail of decisions, not just a list of flags
Per-matter readiness summary that sits with the file
Configurable for boutique firm workflows — turn off classes of nudge that don’t apply to your practice areas
Local-first deployment; no draft content leaves the firm’s environment

CTA

Join the waitlist — be the first to know when the In-Draft Compliance Nudge Agent opens for Sydney boutique firms

The Nudge Agent is in design partner intake. We’re working with a small number of boutique firms to shape the nudge taxonomy, the dismiss-with-reason workflow, and the integration surface (Word, Google Docs, or in-editor plugin). Join the waitlist and we’ll let you know when access opens — and the firms on the list shape what ships.

Sources

Administrative Review Tribunal — Practice directions and other guidance: 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
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — Privacy guidance for organisations: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy

Exegesis capability references: