← All guidelines·Guideline 1 of 8
Every authority, quotation and fact is checked against its source before it goes to court. The check is done by a person, on the original, not by the tool that produced the draft.
Red · Must An existing duty. Breach may be misconduct.
The rule
“A legal practitioner shall take all reasonable steps to avoid, directly or indirectly, misleading a court or a tribunal on any matter of fact or question of law. In particular, a legal practitioner shall not mislead a court or a tribunal in respect of what is in papers before the court or tribunal, including any transcript of evidence.”
LPC Code of Conduct, para 57.1
The GCB Uniform Rules put the same duty on counsel as an “overriding duty not to mislead the Court” (rule 3.2).
Neither rule mentions AI. Neither needs to. A false authority or a misstated fact misleads the court whoever, or whatever, produced it, and the duty attaches to the practitioner who puts it before the court.
What goes wrong
A case that does not exist is the best-known failure. It is one of six.
- A case that does not exist.
- A real case with the wrong citation. The reader looks in the law report and does not find it.
- A real case with a wrong quotation. Words are added, left out, or taken from a different judgment and joined on.
- A real case that does not say what it is cited for. The passage is obiter, a dissent, or a summary of counsel’s argument.
- A fact that is not in the record. An inference or a summary is stated as if a witness had said it.
- Evidence that is not the witness’s own. An affidavit or witness statement must be in the deponent’s own knowledge and words, not text a tool produced.
The first four appeared together in a single High Court judgment. In FJL v TGO the Johannesburg High Court, sitting on appeal in July 2026, tabulated eleven discrepancies in the judgment under appeal: correct case names with wrong citations, accurate citations with inaccurate quotations to which passages from other cases had been attached, and citations that corresponded to no reported case (at [32]–[33]). Opperman J recorded that the judgment would be forwarded to the Legal Practice Council for investigation (at [122]).
“Names of non-existent cases are not law.”
FJL v TGO, Opperman J at [62]
Facts and evidence
The duty covers what is in the papers as much as what is in the law reports.
- Every material fact is tied to a page, paragraph or line in the affidavit, transcript or exhibit.
- Allegations, admitted facts, disputed evidence and inferences are kept apart. A summary must not blur them.
- A summary of part of the record is not a review of the whole record. Say what has been read.
- AI is not used to fill a gap in the facts, or to turn an inference into something a witness said.
- AI is not used to suggest to a witness what the witness’s evidence should be.
- An affidavit or witness statement reflects the deponent’s own knowledge. Its factual content is not, in the ordinary course, generated by AI.
What South African courts have said
In Mavundla, counsel relied in argument on cases that a candidate attorney had found. Several did not exist. Bezuidenhout J tested one citation on ChatGPT, which confirmed that the case existed and dealt with the point (at [50]). The court held:
“relying on AI technologies when doing legal research is irresponsible and downright unprofessional.”
Mavundla, Bezuidenhout J at [50]
The judgment was referred to the Legal Practice Council (at [51]).
In Northbound, heads of argument in an urgent application contained incorrect citations that counsel accepted appeared to be AI hallucinations; they had come from a subscription tool that claimed to be trained exclusively on South African judgments and legislation (at [89]). There was no intention to mislead. The court nonetheless referred the practitioners’ conduct to the Legal Practice Council (at [96]), holding that
“even negligence in this context may have grave repercussions particularly to the administration of justice and, in appropriate circumstances, could constitute serious professional misconduct.”
Northbound, Smit AJ at [95]
The court endorsed the reasoning in Mavundla and the principles stated by the English Divisional Court in Ayinde, and held that those principles apply with equal force in South Africa (at [93]–[94]).
Green · Method The checks
For each authority and each material fact, before the document leaves chambers.
- Obtain the source. The judgment itself, from a reliable report or database. Not a headnote, a summary or the tool’s description of it.
- Confirm it is the right case. Name, court, date and citation.
- Compare the quotation word for word, and the paragraph or page reference with it. Mark what is a quotation and what is a paraphrase.
- Read the passage in context. Ratio, obiter, dissent or a summary of argument.
- Test the proposition. State in one line what the case is cited for, and confirm that the judgment supports that line.
- Look for adverse authority. Checking one’s own citations does not show that the research was complete.
- Confirm it is still good law. Appeals, later cases and changes to legislation.
- Check facts against the record. A page reference in the papers or the transcript for every material fact.
- Check the version that is filed. Edits after the last check can introduce new errors.
Guide 9 sets out this routine step by step, and Guide 8 describes a research folder in which nothing can be cited unless its source is on file.
Orange · Should Keep a record of the checks
Keep enough to show what was checked, against which source, when, and with what result. For most written work a short table is sufficient.
| Item | Source and pinpoint | Checks done | Result | By and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Para 12, quotation from judgment | Judgment, para [34] | Exists; wording; context; supports the proposition | Verified / qualified / contradicted / source missing / not checked | Initials, date |
A “verified” label produced by an AI tool is not a record that anyone checked. Unresolved items stay marked as unresolved.
Three questions
Can the tool check its own work? AI can assist a check: for example, by listing every citation in a draft so that each can be ticked off against the source. It cannot perform the check. Asking a model whether it is sure verifies nothing, and a second tool agreeing with the first verifies nothing. Only the source does.
What if an error is found after filing? Correct it promptly. Inform the instructing attorney and, through the proper channel, the court and the other side. A prompt correction limits the harm. An error left in place once known is a different and more serious matter.
How do other jurisdictions deal with this? In England and Wales, lawyers who use AI for legal research have a professional duty to check its accuracy against authoritative sources before relying on it (Ayinde [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin) at [7]). In New South Wales, where AI has been used to prepare written submissions, the author must verify in the submissions themselves that every citation exists, is accurate and is relevant, and that verification may not be done solely with an AI tool (Practice Note SC Gen 23, paras 16–17). In Victoria, asking an AI tool to confirm its own material is “not sufficient verification” (Practice Note SC Gen 25, para 7.4(e)). In New Zealand, persons filing submissions must ensure that every authority is genuine and correctly cited, and reliance on false citations may in serious cases amount to obstruction of justice or contempt (Jones v Family Court at Whangārei [2026] NZSC 1 at [7]). In Ontario, licensees are told always to verify independently any AI-produced information they intend to rely on (Law Society of Ontario, Generative AI: your professional obligations, practice tip 3). The international comparison sets these side by side.
Sources on file: LPC Code of Conduct (GG 42337, 29 March 2019), para 57.1. GCB Uniform Rules of Professional Ethics (as updated July 2024), rule 3.2. FJL v TGO (2025/220239) (GJ, 31 July 2026), Opperman J concurring, paras [32]–[33], [62] and [122]. Mavundla v MEC: Department of Co-operative Government and Traditional Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal [2025] ZAKZPHC 2; 2025 (3) SA 534 (KZP), paras [50]–[51]. Northbound Processing (Pty) Ltd v South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator [2025] ZAGPJHC 661, paras [89] and [93]–[96]. R (Ayinde) v London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin), para [7]. Supreme Court of New South Wales, Practice Note SC Gen 23, paras 16–17. Supreme Court of Victoria, Practice Note SC Gen 25, para 7.4(e). Jones v Family Court at Whangārei [2026] NZSC 1, para [7]. Law Society of Ontario, Generative AI: your professional obligations (2024), practice tip 3.
Status. A proposed guideline, put forward by Greg Fourie SC for discussion. It has not been adopted by the Legal Practice Council, the General Council of the Bar or any society of advocates. Read the Code and the judgments themselves before relying on them.