Federal Court Pre-Lodgement Verification Gateway for Sydney Litigation Lawyers: Catch AI-Use Disclosure Gaps Before Filing
You’re filing in the NSW registry of the Federal Court this afternoon. The submissions went through three drafts, one of which a junior associate cleaned up with a generative AI tool. The expert report attached to your evidence had a section reformatted the same way. Nobody on the team is entirely sure which paragraphs were model-touched, whether any of that touching needs to be disclosed under GPN-AI, or whether the expert’s AI use needs separate disclosure under the ART Expert Evidence Practice Direction line of reasoning that the Federal Court increasingly leans on. The Pre-Lodgement Verification Gateway is built to surface those gaps before lodgement, not after.
The problem
Disclosure of generative AI use is no longer a soft expectation. The Federal Court of Australia’s General Practice Note on the use of generative AI (GPN-AI) sets out responsibilities for practitioners filing documents prepared with AI assistance, including the verification of citations and authority references. Where expert evidence is involved, the Administrative Review Tribunal’s practice directions on expert witnesses set out parallel expectations about candour and the basis on which expert opinion is formed — expectations that Federal Court judges hearing related matters treat as a touchstone. The risk isn’t only fabricated citations. It’s a disclosure gap: a filing that touched a model somewhere in its lifecycle, no record of where, no statement on the cover, and no audit trail if a judge asks at the first case management hearing. Under the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules, the obligation of candour to the court (Rule 19) sits on top of all of this.
Manual review at filing speed cannot reliably reconstruct which paragraphs were AI-touched, which citations were AI-generated, and which expert annexures need their own disclosure note. That’s the gap this gateway closes.
What the Federal Court Pre-Lodgement Verification Gateway does
The Gateway is a Federal Court-specific pre-lodgement check. It takes the filing bundle — submissions, affidavits, expert reports, lists of authorities — and runs a GPN-AI compliance pass against it before the document leaves the firm. The deliverable is a single readiness report that names the disclosure obligations engaged, flags every cited authority for verification status, and identifies content blocks where AI-use disclosure may be required.
The Gateway is the Federal Court companion to RuleCheck by Exegesis, the open-source pre-lodgement checker (github.com/andrefabre/rulecheck). It does not generate legal content. It does not transmit drafts to external LLMs. The verification logic is deterministic and runs locally against an Australian authority registry.
How it works
- Upload the filing bundle to the Gateway — submissions, affidavits, expert reports, list of authorities.
.txt,.mdand structured text formats are accepted. - Citation extraction and verification. Every cited authority is extracted and checked against the registry (Federal Court, Federal Circuit and Family Court, High Court, State Supreme Courts, AustLII). Each citation returns a status: verified, mismatched, or not found.
- GPN-AI disclosure check. The Gateway flags sections where generative AI involvement was declared in the bundle metadata against sections where disclosure language is missing on the face of the document, and surfaces the mismatch.
- Expert evidence pass. Where an expert report is included, the Gateway checks for an AI-use statement consistent with ART expert-evidence guidance and Federal Court practice on expert reports.
- Readiness report delivered. A structured markdown report lists every finding, the rule or practice note engaged, and a recommended action — re-verify against AustLII, add disclosure paragraph, replace citation, escalate to partner.
Why this matters in Sydney
The NSW registry of the Federal Court is one of the busiest in the country, and Sydney litigation teams are filing into a court that has now published explicit guidance on generative AI. A Sydney solicitor filing under GPN-AI carries the same verification and disclosure burden as a Melbourne or Brisbane counterpart, but the volume of filings going through the registry means the surface area for an undisclosed AI-touched paragraph or a hallucinated citation is larger. Adverse cost orders, professional standards referrals, and the reputational cost of being the firm a judge names in open court are not theoretical. The Gateway is built to make pre-lodgement verification a routine step rather than a heroic act by a senior associate at 9pm.
Sources
- 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
- Administrative Review Tribunal — Practice Directions and Other Guidance: https://www.art.gov.au/help-and-resources/professionals-and-practitioners/practice-directions-and-other-guidance
- 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
- AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute): https://www.austlii.edu.au/
- RuleCheck by Exegesis (open source): https://github.com/andrefabre/rulecheck
Join the waitlist
The Gateway is in build, with the underlying citation-verification layer live in beta. We’re scoping pricing (per-filing, per-user monthly, or firm-licence) based on what we hear from teams filing into the NSW registry. Join the waitlist and what you tell us will shape the tier you sit in.