NEW ZEALAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Shane Campbell and Thomas Westaway, Campbell Westaway
10.2 Impact Artificial intelligence is having a growing impact on dispute resolution in New Zealand. In legal practice, AI tools are increasingly deployed for document review, legal research, contract analysis, and drafting, with the potential to reduce materially the time and cost of legal services. That potential is contingent on rigorous human oversight. The most acute concern in the New Zealand courts is AI hallucination: the generation of fictitious case cita- tions, statutory references, and legal propositions by generative AI. A global database tracking hallucinated AI content in judicial proceedings records six New Zealand cases, all involving self-represented litigants – a pattern consistent with overseas experience. Self- represented parties are particularly vulnerable, lacking the legal training to interrogate AI outputs critically. In Jones v Family Court at Whangarei [2026] NZSC 1, the Supreme Court identified multiple hallucinated authorities and warned that reliance on false citations could, in serious cases, amount to obstruction of jus- tice or contempt of court. The cumulative effect of these decisions is to place a clear professional obligation on lawyers to verify all AI-generated content before filing, and to highlight an emerging access-to-justice concern: self-represented litigants relying on AI assistance without adequate means to verify its accuracy. Beyond these immediate concerns, AI is beginning to influence dispute resolution more broadly through case outcome prediction, automated document review for large disclosure exercises, and the stream- lining of routine procedural tasks. These applications remain at an early stage in New Zealand but are devel- oping rapidly.
10.3 Future The courts have engaged with AI cautiously rather than as an active efficiency tool. The AI Guidelines establish a framework for responsible use but do not encourage deployment in case management or decision-making. Judicial attention has focused on managing the risks of misuse rather than harnessing AI to improve throughput or reduce delay. The Law Commission has been asked to develop a legal framework governing government use of auto- mated decision-making, including AI-assisted pro- cesses, with work expected to begin mid-2026. That signals growing institutional recognition that dedicat- ed attention to AI governance is required. The profession is moving faster. Since mid-2025, several firms have made firm-wide commitments to generative AI platforms, and major legal research databases, including Westlaw, have integrated AI- assisted research tools. AI-assisted disclosure review is already used in large commercial cases and is likely to become standard practice under the New Rules, where front-loaded disclosure obligations create a clear incentive for automation. New Zealand’s broader regulatory posture is expected to remain light-touch, consistent with its established pattern as a considered adopter of international norms rather than a first mover.
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