Choosing a jurisdiction before using legal AI
Pick the jurisdiction before you type the question, not after you read the answer. The Courts of New Zealand's guidance for non-lawyers on generative AI says directly that information from a GenAI chatbot "may be based on overseas law that does not apply in New Zealand," and that the person putting that information before a court or tribunal is the one responsible for its accuracy. If you never decided which legal system the question was about, you have nothing to compare the answer against — and the mismatch is exactly the failure the guidance is warning about.
What the New Zealand guidance actually puts on you
The Courts of New Zealand / Heads of Bench Committee document addresses non-lawyers using generative AI in the courts and tribunals listed in that guidance.
You are responsible for ensuring that all information you provide to the court or tribunal is accurate, and you must check the accuracy of anything you get from a GenAI chatbot before using it in proceedings. The guidance lists what can go wrong:
- Output may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and may be based on overseas law that does not apply in New Zealand.
- The chatbot may make up fake cases, citations and quotes, or refer to legislation, articles or legal texts that do not exist.
- It may give incorrect or misleading information about the law or how it might apply in your case.
- It may get facts wrong.
- It may confirm that information is true if asked, even when it is not.
That second-to-last and last point are easy to skim past. A system that will affirm its own output on request cannot be used as its own check, and wrong facts and wrong law fail independently of each other — verifying the rule does not verify the narrative built on top of it.
The guidance also notes that fake material "can look as though it has been taken from a real source even when it has not," which is why it recommends checking any legal information with a lawyer where possible, and points to the free legal resources on the Ministry of Justice, Citizens Advice Bureau, Community Law and New Zealand Law Society websites.
Why the jurisdiction has to be your input
Everything in that failure list describes the surface of the answer — citations, quotes, facts, phrasing. None of it tells you which legal system the answer was reasoning inside. A citation may look plausible while pointing to a source outside the jurisdiction that governs the matter.
So the ordering matters for a practical reason. Name the forum first and you create a baseline: an answer about New Zealand employment law can be checked against New Zealand primary sources, and an answer that quietly reasons from another country's statute shows up as a mismatch. Skip that step and you are reading text that looks internally consistent while having no way to locate it.
Doing it in order
Each step is one action.
Write down the country, and the state or province where they exist. Write down the court or tribunal, and its level. Put all of that into the prompt. Ask the system to name the jurisdiction whose law it is relying on. Open the primary source it names in that jurisdiction's official source. Confirm the cited case, section or rule actually exists there. Read the local source and compare it with what the answer says. Check the facts separately from the law. Treat any answer that cannot name a local primary source as unusable. Where possible, check the result with a lawyer. Keep a record of what you checked and what you found.
Do not use "is this correct?" as a verification step. The guidance says a chatbot may confirm information is true when asked even when it is not.
Mapping the warnings to your check
| What the guidance warns about | What it means for your jurisdiction check |
|---|---|
| Output may be based on overseas law that does not apply locally | The answer may use a different legal system; identify and verify the relevant forum |
| Fake cases, citations and quotes | A citation that reads as local may not exist at all; open the official source |
| References to legislation, articles or legal texts that do not exist | You need the chosen jurisdiction's own statute book and judgment database, not a summary |
| Incorrect or misleading on how the law applies | A correctly quoted rule can still be applied under foreign procedure or tests |
| Gets facts wrong | Fact-checking and law-checking are separate passes |
| Confirms information is true when asked, even when it is not | The system is not an authority on its own output |
Where this guidance stops
This is a New Zealand court-use document addressed to non-lawyers, and it should be read at that scale. It is not a universal rule about legal AI, and nothing here should be read as describing what courts elsewhere require.
The passages cited in this article identify accuracy risks and place responsibility for court or tribunal submissions on the non-lawyer user. This article does not assess any product standard or certification; its checking sequence is an editorial method rather than a protocol established by the quoted passages.
The cited passages warn that AI output may rely on overseas law. This article does not determine the correct jurisdiction for an individual matter; if that choice is uncertain, seek appropriate legal advice before relying on a tool’s answer.