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Large language models have arrived in litigation practice. This site is a practical starting point for South African advocates and attorneys: how to set the tools up, how to use them on a matter, how to check what comes back, and where the professional duties sit. Why this site exists.

Start here

Guides

Eleven step-by-step guides, from installing the app to checking a draft before it is filed, with three worked examples.

Guide 1 → The rules

Proposed guidelines

Eight proposed guidelines for advocates who use AI. Each rests on a duty that already exists in the Code of Conduct or the Uniform Rules.

Read the guidelines → The sources

Research

Case law, court rules and professional guidance on AI in legal practice, by source type, South Africa first.

Find sources →

The blank chat box

Every AI tool greets you the same way: an empty box and a blinking cursor. It looks so simple. It’s also where most people get stuck. If your first few tries felt disappointing, it probably wasn’t you or the tool. It was the blank box.

Sketch: a puzzled stick figure looks at an empty chat window. The only thing in it is a message box with a blinking cursor, labelled: a blinking cursor, now what?
The blank box: an empty box and a blinking cursor.

How to fill in the blanks

The good news: getting better results isn’t hard. Tell the AI who you are, what you need, what material to work from and how you’d like the answer. Give it the documents instead of asking it to remember the law. Then check what comes back. It helps to picture a bright, eager junior on their first day. Quick and willing, but they need clear instructions and someone keeping an eye on their work.

Made-up example
Who you areYou are my junior. I am an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar, briefed in a contract claim.
What you needI need a two-page note on whether the claim has prescribed.
What to work fromUse only the documents in research/ and the particulars of claim in pleadings/. Nothing from memory.
How you want itAnswer first, then the reasons, with a document and paragraph reference for every point. Mark any gap as a gap.
+Type a message↑

Then check what comes back

1Every tool greets you the same way: an empty box and a blinking cursor. This is where most people get stuck.

2Say who you are, and who the tool is to be.

3Say what you need. One task, in one sentence.

4Say what to work from. Give it the documents instead of asking it to remember the law.

5Say how you want the answer, and what to do with a gap.

6Then check what comes back. A bright, eager junior on their first day: quick, willing, and in need of someone keeping an eye on the work.

It isn’t a magic answer machine

Sometimes AI produces results that are so astonishingly good, it becomes tempting to think of it as an oracle. It isn’t. It predicts words that sound right, and most of the time that’s genuinely useful. But now and then it gets things confidently wrong, including inventing cases that don’t exist and quotes no judge ever wrote. In 2023, two New York lawyers made legal history that way in Mata v Avianca, Inc., 678 F Supp 3d 443 (SDNY, 22 June 2023); Damien Charlotin’s AI Hallucination Cases database has since passed 2,000 entries. The checking routine on this site exists for that reason.

One minute on video

Why this site exists · Check an AI-assisted draft · Useful links · About the author