How to check a legal AI answer against official sources

This article checks legal AI answers against two jurisdiction-specific sources: the England and Wales Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide 2026 and New Zealand courts guidance for non-lawyers. Check the official repository for each cited authority and the rules of the court where material will be used; these sources do not establish a rule for other courts.

What England and Wales requires when AI helps draft your documents

The Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide 2026 addresses AI directly. Legal representatives, litigants in person, and those assisting them should take reasonable care when using AI tools to draft pleadings, witness statements and skeleton arguments for judicial review. The Guide singles out three things that care must cover: the accuracy of citations to legal authorities, any statement of legal propositions or principles drawn from those authorities, and factual matters. It adds a plain reminder that AI chatbots may well be prone to error.

The obligation sits on the person filing, not on the tool. That is the practical reason a verification step belongs in your workflow at all.

What failure to check can lead to

The Guide does not describe these as automatic. It says failure to take reasonable care with the use of AI tools may result in:

• costs sanctions;
• the striking out of a case;
• referral to a professional regulator;
• the initiation of contempt proceedings;
• referral to the police.

In support of that passage the Guide cites R (Ayinde) v The London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin). There is also a document-hygiene condition attached: people using AI tools remain subject to the relevant page limits for documents produced for the Court, and should not include irrelevant materials. A long list of half-checked authorities is not a substitute for a short list of verified ones.

The repositories the Guide points you to

For England and Wales, verification means going to the official text rather than to a summary of it. The Guide's own list of reference points is:

• the electronic version of the Guide itself, at www.judiciary.uk/courts-and-tribunals/high-court/administrative-court/;
• the Civil Procedure Rules, at www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules;
• UK legislation, at www.legislation.gov.uk;
• case law, at caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk;
• British and Irish case law and legislation, at www.bailii.org.

How much weight the Guide itself carries

This matters when you are deciding what to cite back. The Guide has been prepared under the direction of the Judge in Charge of the Administrative Court and explains the practice and procedure of the Administrative Court in judicial review cases. It is not intended to address the substance of administrative law or public law generally.

It must be read with the CPR and the supporting Practice Directions, and litigants and their advisers must acquaint themselves with those rules. The Guide does not have the force of law, but it is described as "essential reading for all those who practice in the Administrative Court" — a phrase the Guide attributes to R (DVP) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 606 (Admin), [2021] 4 WLR 75, at [8]. The Guide also refers to R (AB) v Chief Constable of Hampshire Constabulary & Others [2019] EWHC 3461 (Admin), at [108].

The operative instruction is that parties should draw the Court's attention to a particular rule or case and not merely rely on the Guide. It applies to cases heard in the Administrative Court wherever it is sitting and in the Administrative Court Offices across England and Wales. Its contents, including websites, email addresses, telephone numbers and addresses, are correct at the time of publication, and it will be updated from time to time.

The verification habit this produces: cite the rule or the case, not the Guide's paraphrase of it.

What New Zealand tells non-lawyers

The New Zealand guidance is written for non-lawyers — including self-represented litigants, McKenzie friends and lay advocates — who represent themselves or others, and it applies to the courts and tribunals listed on page 6 of that document. It states the responsibility in the first person: you are responsible for ensuring that all information you provide to the court or tribunal is accurate, and you must check the accuracy of any information you get from a GenAI chatbot before using it in proceedings.

The stated reasons are concrete. GenAI output may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and it may be based on overseas law that does not apply in New Zealand. The guidance lists what chatbots may do:

• make up fake cases, citations and quotes, or refer to legislation, articles or legal texts that do not exist;
• provide incorrect or misleading information about the law or how it might apply to your case;
• get facts wrong;
• confirm that information is true if asked, even when it is not.

The line worth remembering is that fake material produced by a GenAI chatbot can look as though it has been taken from a real source even when it has not. The guidance also states that GenAI chatbots are not a substitute for a qualified lawyer and cannot give tailored legal advice, and that if you use one for a dispute or case you should not rely on it as your sole or main source of legal information.

For checking, it directs users to a lawyer where possible, and to free legal resources on the Ministry of Justice, Citizens Advice Bureau, Community Law and New Zealand Law Society websites.

Why a clean-looking citation still fails

Both documents describe the same failure mode from different directions. A citation can carry the right court, the right year and a plausible paragraph number and still not exist, and asking the tool to confirm it does not settle the question — the New Zealand guidance says a chatbot may confirm information is true even when it is not. That is why the check has to happen outside the conversation, in the repository, against the text itself.

A checking sequence

The sequence below is this article’s suggested workflow, not a checklist mandated by the cited passages.

1. Write down the jurisdiction and the court first.
2. Copy out every citation, quotation and case name in the AI answer.
3. List them in a separate column from the propositions the AI drew from them.
4. Open each authority on the official repository for that jurisdiction.
5. Search by the citation, not by the AI's description of the case.
6. Open the paragraph the AI relied on.
7. Confirm the case name, year, court and paragraph number.
8. Confirm the authority comes from the same jurisdiction as your matter.
9. Check the version you are reading is the current one.
10. Check the proposition against the words actually on the page.
11. Re-check any fact the AI attached to the authority.
12. Note where you verified each item.
13. Delete anything you could not verify.

Step 13 is the one that carries the professional risk. Unverified material that stays in a document is exactly what the England and Wales consequences list is aimed at.

Comparing the two regimes

Where this material stops short

This article’s cited passages do not establish a required number of checks, checklist format, product endorsement or measured accuracy for any AI tool. Check the current version of the applicable court guidance before filing; for another jurisdiction, find that jurisdiction’s rules and primary sources.

Sources

• The Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide 2026 — Courts and Tribunals Judiciary of England and Wales
• Generative Artificial Intelligence in Courts and Tribunals: Non-lawyers — Courts of New Zealand / Heads of Bench Committee