How to use AI for choosing a legal AI tool in Australia

Steps

1. Work through the joint checklist

   The 2026 law societies’ selection and use checklist is the question list: what the tool does, what it must not do, and who in the firm is accountable. Answer it for the matter types you actually have. A vendor’s security PDF is not a completed checklist.

2. Read hosting, training, security and exit

   Ask which country stores and processes the prompts and the documents, whether customer content trains a model, what the independent security reports cover, and how you get the data out when the contract ends. The OAIC’s commercial-AI guidance is the privacy side of those questions. The hosting guide shows how this catalogue labels “Australian region available” differently from “hosted in Australia”.

3. Pilot on real matters, then decide

   Run the tool on matters a partner reviews, and write down what it missed. A demonstration file from the vendor is not that pilot. Add the tool to the policy only after the pilot, the checklist and the contract say the same thing.

Record the checks on a task checklist · Open the court note for the forum

Sources

• Joint law societies AI selection and use checklist (2026)
• OAIC: commercially available AI products