Statement of method
What TrueCite does, from which sources, without any AI, and where the judgment is left to the practitioner. Written so that a partner, an insurer or a judge can check it.
What the courts require
Australian courts have set out what they expect of practitioners who use generative AI in preparing documents. The Federal Court of Australia's Practice Note GPN-AI (16 April 2026) requires that citations produced with AI assistance be verified against a primary source, and not by means of another AI tool. The Supreme Court of New South Wales requires that the verification of citations, authorities and references "must not be solely carried out by using a Gen AI tool or program" (SC Gen 23), and the District Court, the Local Court and the Land and Environment Court follow it. The Supreme Court of Victoria's SC GEN 25 states that one AI tool cannot be used to confirm content generated by another. The Queensland courts require a named practitioner to "verify the accuracy and relevance of any references to legislation, authorities or other sources". Western Australia and South Australia have issued guidelines to similar effect. The table lists each instrument in force on 6 September 2026, and the courts that have not yet issued one. Practitioners remain responsible for every authority they put before a court.
Checked on 6 September 2026 and reviewed each quarter. Where this table and a court's own page differ, the court's page prevails. Corrections to info@truecite.com.au.
How each requirement is met, and what the certificate records
| Requirement | What TrueCite does | What the certificate records |
|---|---|---|
| Verify each authority against the primary source | The citation, the quoted passage and the paragraph pinpoint are compared against the text of the judgment itself, retrieved from the jurisdiction's register where its terms permit, or supplied by the practitioner. | For each citation: exists, citation matches, quotation verbatim, pinpoint matches, status; the register or the words "source supplied by the practitioner"; date and time. |
| Not by means of another AI tool | No model is used at any step. Citations are located by grammar, judgments are compared by exact matching after whitespace and punctuation are normalised, and the verdict is produced by code. | The line "Deterministic · model calls: 0". |
| The practitioner remains responsible | Anything the method cannot decide is listed, never passed silently, and the certificate says so in words. | The section "left for the practitioner", and the boundary statement printed on every certificate. |
| Accuracy of quotations and pinpoints | A quotation passes only if it appears verbatim in the judgment; a pinpoint passes only if the quoted passage sits within that numbered paragraph. Near matches fail. | Quotation and pinpoint results per citation. |
| A record that can be examined later | Every certificate is hashed and appended to a hash-chained ledger that stores citations and results, never the document. | The certificate hash, the ledger sequence number and a recompute address. |
No AI at any step, and how anyone can check
This is not an assurance; it is a property of the code. Three things make it checkable. First, the software contains no interface to any language model, and its test suite asserts that a full run makes no outbound network request at all. Second, every certificate prints the line "model calls: 0", which is written by the same code that performs the checks. Third, the certificate format is open: a court, an opponent or an insurer can rerun the comparison and obtain the same page.
As at 6 September 2026 the release checks stand at 119 automated tests, 0 failures, 0 outbound requests.
Where the judgment text comes from
A verification is only as good as its source. TrueCite's policy on sources is public and conservative.
- AustLII's usage policy does not permit programmatic access. TrueCite does not retrieve from AustLII, and its tests assert that no request is ever made to it.
- By default the practitioner supplies the judgment text they retrieved from the register themselves. The certificate records that the source was supplied by the practitioner.
- Direct retrieval from a jurisdiction's register is enabled only where written permission or a licence has been obtained, and the certificate names the register used.
- Where a register cannot be consulted and no text is supplied, the citation is marked as left to the practitioner, with a link to the register's own search.
What TrueCite does not do
- It does not assess whether an authority supports the proposition for which it is cited.
- It does not determine whether an authority is still good law.
- It does not resolve a reported citation that has no medium-neutral form beyond confirming that a source was supplied.
- It does not give legal advice, and a certificate does not discharge a practitioner's duty to the court. It records that the verification was done, by what method, and what remained for the practitioner.
The standing test deck
Authorities that Australian courts have already found to be fabricated, including those recorded in Dayal [2024] FedCFamC2F 1166, Valu v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (No 2) [2025] FedCFamC2G 95, Murray on behalf of the Wamba Wemba Native Title Claim Group v State of Victoria [2025] FCA 731 and JNE24 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2025] FedCFamC2G 1314, form a standing test deck. Each must come up red before a release ships. Results are published with their hashes.
Patent and contact
The verification method is the subject of Australian provisional patent application no. 2026907583, filed 6 September 2026. The certificate format itself is open so that anyone can recompute a certificate without a licence.
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