Expert Report Provenance Agent for Melbourne Litigation Lawyers: Know Exactly Which Parts of an Expert Report Were Written by AI
Your expert witness has filed their report. Counsel is preparing cross-examination. Opposing solicitors send a short letter: “Please confirm whether any part of the report was generated, drafted or assisted by generative AI, and identify which sections.” Your expert says she “used ChatGPT to tidy up the methodology section”. You now need to know — paragraph by paragraph — what was written by the expert, what was AI-generated, and what was AI-edited. You don’t have that record. The Expert Report Provenance Agent is built so that this question has a defensible answer before it gets asked.
The problem
Expert reports are no longer drafted in a single pen. Experts dictate, summarise prior reports, use AI tools to rephrase methodology, ask models to draft tables, and accept track-changes suggestions from junior staff. By the time the report is signed, the provenance of each section is opaque — even to the expert. That opacity becomes a problem when a tribunal or court asks the question directly.
The Administrative Review Tribunal’s practice directions and other guidance for professionals set out expectations for expert evidence, including the expert’s duty to the Tribunal and the requirement that the report reflect the expert’s own opinion. The Federal Court’s General Practice Note on AI (GPN-AI) addresses the use of generative AI in proceedings and the obligations on practitioners around AI-assisted material. The Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules (Rule 19) require candour to the court, which extends to questions about how a report was actually produced. If you cannot answer “which sentences did the AI write?”, you are exposed on three fronts at once: the expert’s independence, your duty of candour, and the weight the tribunal places on the report.
What the Expert Report Provenance Agent does
The Expert Report Provenance Agent tracks the provenance of every section of an expert report — what was AI-generated, what was human-drafted, what was human-edited after AI assistance, and what was untouched by AI. The output is a section-by-section provenance map that sits alongside the final report. If an objection, a notice to produce, or a cross-examination question lands on the topic of AI use, you have a record of what was generated, what was edited, and by whom — not a recollection.
The agent is a workflow tool for solicitors and instructing teams, not an attempt to police experts. Its job is to make the provenance question answerable.
How it works
- Ingest drafts. You upload each version of the expert report — initial draft, post-AI-edit version, expert’s revisions, final signed version — into the provenance workspace.
- Diff and classify. The agent compares versions and classifies each paragraph as human-original, AI-generated, AI-edited (human-original text passed through an AI tool), or human-edited (AI-generated text revised by the expert).
- Attach attribution metadata. Each section carries metadata: which tool touched it, at which stage, and whether the expert reviewed and adopted the wording.
- Produce a provenance report. A markdown report maps the final filed report section-by-section to its provenance classification, suitable for the matter file and for disclosure if required.
- Archive. The provenance record is stored alongside the expert report and the brief, ready to be produced if the question is asked.
Why this matters in Melbourne
Melbourne litigation teams appearing in the Federal Court Victoria Registry, the Supreme Court of Victoria, and the Administrative Review Tribunal are increasingly dealing with expert evidence produced with some degree of AI assistance — by the expert, by the expert’s staff, or by the solicitors briefing them. The Federal Court’s GPN-AI sets explicit expectations on practitioners around AI use. The ART’s practice directions and guidance for professionals set expectations for expert evidence and the expert’s duty. When the question of AI attribution is raised — by the bench, by opposing counsel, or in a notice — the absence of a provenance record is itself a problem. Building the record at the time the report is drafted, rather than reconstructing it under pressure, is the difference between a clean answer and a damaging one.
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
- AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute): https://www.austlii.edu.au/
Exegesis capability references:
Join the waitlist
We’re scoping access tiers based on demand from litigation practices running expert-heavy matters in the Federal Court Victoria Registry, the Supreme Court of Victoria, and the ART. Join the waitlist and what we hear from you will shape how the workflow integrates with your brief management and expert engagement process.