Building a defensible AI position in a New Zealand in-house legal team

The question about legal AI is no longer whether it is accurate enough to be useful. It is whether you can show how the work was produced.

On 11 February 2026, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Jones v Family Court at Whangārei [2026] NZSC 1. A self-represented litigant had cited authorities which, the Court said, appeared to have been hallucinated by an AI application, and had misattributed propositions of law to four further cases that were genuine but wrongly cited. In serious cases, the Court said, reliance on false citations may amount to obstruction of justice or contempt of court. That was an observation about serious cases, not a finding against a lawyer.

A lawyer’s professional obligations arise independently. Rule 13.1 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2008 imposes an absolute duty of honesty to the court. An authority that does not exist, or that does not say what it is cited for, engages that duty directly.

Checking whether a case exists is not the same as checking whether it says what it is cited for. That is the standard this whitepaper is written to.

Who it is for

New Zealand general counsel, in-house counsel and legal operations leads accountable for how AI-assisted work is checked before it leaves the department.

Vendor-neutral line

The criteria are vendor-neutral. Apply them to any tool, including ours.