Expert AI Attestation Agent for Brisbane Firm Principals: Lock Down Expert Witness AI Disclosures Before They Reach the Court

Your expert’s report is due to be served on Friday. The expert is a structural engineer who has built a useful workflow using a commercial LLM to draft sections, summarise prior literature, and tidy calculations. You are the supervising principal. If the other side cross-examines on AI use and the expert’s attestation is vague, contradictory, or missing detail the court expects, the report is in trouble — and so is the matter you’ve been preparing for eighteen months. The Expert AI Attestation Agent is built to make that attestation defensible, specific, and consistent with the obligations your firm owes the court under the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules.

The problem

Expert evidence is increasingly drafted with AI assistance — for literature review, calculation checks, prose tightening, or first-pass synthesis. Courts and tribunals are asking experts to be specific about what was used, where, and how it was verified. The risk for the instructing firm is that the expert produces an attestation that is either too thin (no detail about which sections were AI-assisted, what model, what verification) or internally inconsistent (the methodology section describes manual analysis but the metadata or drafting history says otherwise). Either failure can be used to attack the expert’s independence and, by extension, the principal’s supervision of the brief.

Under the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules, solicitors carry duties of candour to the court and of honest dealing in the conduct of litigation. A partner or firm principal who signs off on expert evidence is responsible for ensuring the expert’s report — and any accompanying attestation about how it was prepared — does not mislead the court. When AI use is part of the preparation, that responsibility extends to the disclosure of that use.

Manually drafting a bespoke AI-use attestation for every expert, every report, every jurisdiction, in a way that survives cross-examination, is not a practical use of partner time.

What the Expert AI Attestation Agent does

The Expert AI Attestation Agent generates ART- and court-compliant attestations for expert witnesses describing their AI use in preparing evidence. It takes a structured intake from the expert (which tools, which sections, which prompts, what verification steps were taken, what the expert independently formed a view on) and produces an attestation document the expert can review, amend, and sign. The output is designed to:

• State the AI tools used, with model and version where known
• Identify which sections or tasks were AI-assisted versus independently authored
• Describe the verification the expert performed before adopting any AI-assisted output
• Confirm the expert’s independent opinion is their own and not a model’s output
• Align with the disclosure expectations of the relevant court or tribunal

The attestation is a document the expert signs. The agent does not put words in the expert’s mouth — it structures the disclosure so nothing material is left out and nothing inconsistent is left in.

How it works

1. Intake. The instructing solicitor or expert completes a structured questionnaire covering AI tools used, sections affected, prompts or workflows applied, and verification steps taken.
2. Jurisdiction selection. You select the forum (Federal Court, ART, Queensland Supreme Court, etc.) so the attestation language matches the expectations of that forum.
3. Draft generation. The agent produces a draft attestation tailored to the intake and the forum, with explicit sections for tools, scope of use, verification, and the expert’s independent opinion.
4. Expert review. The expert reviews, edits, and confirms each statement is true to their own knowledge. Nothing is signed until the expert is satisfied.
5. Sign-off and archive. The signed attestation is exported as a PDF for service alongside the report, with a Markdown copy retained on the matter file for audit purposes.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Queensland adopted the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules in June 2012, and they remain the operative professional conduct framework for Queensland solicitors. A Brisbane firm principal supervising expert evidence is bound by the ASCR duties of candour to the court and honest conduct of litigation, and is accountable for the way evidence prepared under their supervision is presented. Where an expert’s report has been prepared with AI assistance, the attestation accompanying that report is part of the disclosure the court relies on. A weak attestation reflects on the firm that instructed the expert, not just the expert themselves. The Expert AI Attestation Agent is built so that, when the question comes up in cross-examination, the document on the file holds up.

Sources

• Law Council of Australia — Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules: https://lawcouncil.au/policy-agenda/regulation-of-the-profession-and-ethics/australian-solicitors-conduct-rules

Exegesis capability references:

• Expert AI Attestation Agent specification — 03_Agentic_Solutions/Expert_AI_Attestation_Agent.md
• RuleCheck by Exegesis (open-source citation verifier): https://github.com/andrefabre/rulecheck

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — be first to know when the Expert AI Attestation Agent opens for Brisbane firms

The Expert AI Attestation Agent is in build. We’re scoping pricing (per-attestation, per-matter, or firm-licence) based on what supervising principals and chambers actually need. Join the waitlist and we’ll keep you informed as access opens — and what we hear from you will shape the tier you sit in.