The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary published its Position Statement on the Judicial use of Artificial Intelligence on 9 October 2026. It is issued by Sir Colin Birss, President of the Business and Property Division and Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence, and it sits alongside the judiciary's AI Guidance for Judicial Office Holders, last updated in October 2025, rather than replacing it. The document is judicial policy rather than legislation or a practice direction, and it records that it will be reviewed as technology, the law and judicial guidance change.
The operative conditions sit in the statement itself, which is not divided into numbered articles. Only approved AI tools may be used for judicial purposes, and the statement declines to list them because of the pace of change, setting tool requirements that include United Kingdom data residency and enterprise data protection. AI must not decide the outcome of a case and must not replace judicial reasoning, analysis or discretion. Every AI output used in judicial work must be reviewed, verified and approved by the responsible judicial office holder, who remains fully accountable. New tools, use cases and pilots go to a central steering group chaired by the Lead AI Judge, which weighs legal, ethical, operational, security and data protection questions before anything proceeds.
Litigants, solicitors and barristers appearing in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales now have a published account of how the bench may and may not use these tools, which matters when a party asks how a summary or a chronology before the court was produced. Vendors selling to the Judicial Office, His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service and the Ministry of Justice face the approval route and the data residency and enterprise protection conditions before a tool reaches a judicial office holder. Earlier controlled pilots covered summarisation, transcription, redaction, plain language writing, administrative tasks, chronology building and document analysis, which marks out the functions closest to approval.
The statement does not name the approved tools, does not say whether a judicial office holder must disclose AI assistance in a judgment, and does not deal with use on personal devices. The AI Guidance for Judicial Office Holders remains the detailed source on conduct. Approved uses and safeguards can be altered after pilots, incidents or emerging risks, so the set of permitted tools is not fixed by this document.
Licentium advises legal services providers, litigation funders and technology vendors on AI governance duties in court facing work. Work we undertake includes procurement review against the judicial tool conditions, data residency and enterprise protection assessments, AI use policies for litigation teams, and verification controls for AI assisted filings and evidence.