Practice area
Defamation & Media LawDefamation and media law
Read the actual publication in its full context. Verify the words, audience, dates, alleged meanings and procedural requirements before advising, corresponding or publishing further material.
Key facts
- Tasks covered
- 26
- Tasks with a step-by-step checklist
- 3
- Local differences
- 2 jurisdictions where this area changes
Jurisdiction
Tasks
GreenLawyer reviewYellowClose supervisionRedLawyer-led
| Task | How AI is used | Human involvement | What the lawyer must review |
|---|---|---|---|
| List candidate imputations from the publication | From the article, post or broadcast, list candidate meanings an ordinary reader might take, with the words that support each meaning. | RedLawyer-led |
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| Draft a pre-action concerns or retraction notice | Extract the publication particulars from the saved copy of the matter — publisher, date, where the matter can still be accessed, and whether it is still up, has been altered or has been taken down — into a table beside the lawyer's settled imputations and the words the lawyer relies on for each one. Set out, in a strictly tabular and source-tagged date list, the dates that matter: publication, when the client saw it, service of the notice, and the days the lawyer has identified as the start of the offer-to-make-amends and limitation periods, each date tagged to the document or instruction it comes from. Check the lawyer's draft notice or retraction demand against the concerns-notice content requirements of the place of publication, not the forum, and list any required particular, imputation or element of harm with no source in the saved copy or the client's instructions, without supplying the missing words. | RedLawyer-led | The lawyer writes the notice and owns the imputations and the harm it alleges, because what the notice specifies fixes what can later be pleaded. A statutory concerns notice is a precondition in some places, so confirm the current content, service and timing rules and the date from which the offer-to-make-amends and limitation periods run. That requirement is substantive and travels with the place of publication rather than the forum, so a claim filed in a jurisdiction that has not enacted the concerns-notice requirement, over matter published in one that has, may still have to comply with the publication jurisdiction’s regime. Confirm the position for the actual place of publication and the actual forum before relying on it. Check that the saved copy is a true record of what was published, and every tabulated date against its source, before the notice is served. |
| Build a serious-harm or threshold-evidence table | From the analytics, correspondence and witness notes, list evidence of extent, gravity and actual impact, with gaps marked. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build a serious-harm evidence table under the uniform defamation Acts | From the analytics, correspondence and witness notes, list evidence of extent, gravity and actual impact under s 10A of the uniform Acts, with gaps marked. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build a defences checklist from the publication and the file | List truth, honest opinion, privilege, public-interest and contextual-truth (or local equivalents) against the facts in the file, with missing evidence on each row. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build a defamation-defences checklist from the publication and the state Act | List truth, honest opinion, privilege, public-interest and contextual-truth defences against the file facts, with missing evidence, under the state Act the lawyer named. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Map platform or intermediary liability from the publication path | From the URL, host and complaint history, list who published, who hosted and which complaints-procedure or innocent-dissemination facts are in the file. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Calculate limitation and first-publication dates from the capture | From the capture files, list first-publication dates, later downloads and any single-publication or multiple-publication facts into a date table. | RedLawyer-led |
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| Draft a takedown or complaint pack for AI-generated defamatory content | Produce a first-draft platform complaint or letter from the generated output, the prompts if known and the remedy the lawyer has named. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Draft a statement of claim, defence or particulars of publication | The tool extracts from the publication capture the exact words complained of with their date, headline, byline, placement and any share or download figures, and tabulates each imputation and particular in the pleading the lawyer has written against the passage relied on, the concerns notice and the particulars the court's rules require for each defence pleaded, listing every particular still without a source. It writes no part of the statement of claim, defence or particulars of publication: no draft paragraph, no imputation wording, no precedent text adapted to the matter. | RedLawyer-led | The lawyer settles every imputation and particular in their own words and satisfies themselves that each imputation is reasonably capable of arising from the words as published, that the publisher, recipients, dates and extent pleaded match the capture, and that any truth, contextual truth or honest opinion plea has a proper evidentiary basis before filing. They confirm, as the practitioner's certification of reasonable prospects requires, that the case pleaded rests on provable facts, and that the serious harm and limitation positions are pleaded only on the material actually held. |
| Draft suppression or non-publication submissions from the harm evidence | Produce a first-draft submissions outline from the open-justice test the lawyer has named and the harm evidence on the file. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Draft a settlement deed and a corrective statement or apology | Produce a first-draft deed, offer letter and corrective text from the agreed points, marking wording that could be a fresh publication. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Run a pre-publication defamation review of the draft copy | Flag statements that may defame identified people, list candidate meanings and note where the file has no support. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build a sub judice risk table for a draft publication | From the draft and the current proceedings list, flag passages that identify parties, alleged facts or likely witnesses in active cases. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build a comparable-awards table for damages discussions | From the authorities the lawyer has collected, list awards by injury type, with citations and a note of caps that may apply. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Build an injurious-falsehood or malicious-falsehood issues table | From the publication and the trading-loss papers, list falsity, malice and special-damage facts with document references. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Capture the publication with URL, time, audience and copies | Build a capture record from the URL, screenshots, archive copies and analytics exports, listing what is still missing. | GreenLawyer review |
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| Compare the published text with a proposed correction | Compare the original capture with the draft correction and list meanings that remain, meanings withdrawn and any new sting. | GreenLawyer review |
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| Draft a without-prejudice offer of amends from the notice and the capture | Produce a first-draft offer covering correction, apology, take-down and costs from the notice and the lawyer's settlement range. | YellowClose supervision |
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| Draft an eSafety removal-notice request for AI-generated intimate or defamatory imagery | Assemble the URL capture, harm summary and complaint text from the lawyer-selected material. | YellowClose supervision | Verify capture metadata; do not upload the imagery itself to any AI tool. |
| Assess a client's complaint about AI chatbot outputs defaming them | Collect and log the outputs and publication facts. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer assesses publication and defences. |
| Draft a concerns notice about AI-generated defamatory content | Draft a notice from the logged outputs. | RedLawyer-led | Lawyer settles notice under the uniform Act. |
| Review publication for AI-generated images or deepfakes | Flag likely synthetic content and identification risks. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer assesses legal exposure. |
| Check submissions for hallucinated defamation authorities | Verify every citation exists. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer confirms in AustLII/JADE. |
| Summarise an online-harm takedown pathway | Map eSafety and platform removal options. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer confirms current law. |
| Advise on AI platform liability as a publisher | Apply publication law to the AI platform. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer advises. |
| Assess Stage 2 defamation reforms for an AI chatbot output | Analyse. | YellowClose supervision | Lawyer advises. |
| Explain to a client the risks of AI-assisted defamation litigation | Draft a warning. | GreenLawyer review | Lawyer approves. |
Firm-wide obligations
| Obligation | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Trust accounting & handling client money | Checks that apply across files. |
| Costs, billing & litigation funding | Checks that apply across files. |
| Client-facing & access-to-justice AI tools | Checks that apply across files. |
| Incoming evidence — deepfakes & synthetic documents | Checks that apply across files. |
| AI decision systems | Checks that apply across files. |
| Confidentiality & client information | Checks that apply across files. |
| AML/CTF — the practice as a reporting entity | Checks that apply across files. |
What changes in New Zealand
| Topic | What changes |
|---|---|
| Governing Act | Defamation Act 1992, not the uniform Australian Defamation Acts. |
| Not Australian law | Do not apply the serious-harm threshold, concerns notices or Stage 2 digital-intermediary defences without confirming the same rule in the New Zealand Act. |
| Deepfakes | The Courts of New Zealand guidelines warn that generated multimedia can be fake and raise authenticity issues in evidence. |
- Defamation Act 1992 · 2026-09-23
- Courts of New Zealand: GenAI guidelines — Lawyers (7 December 2023) · 2026-09-23
What changes in United States
Known here as: Defamation and media law
| Topic | What changes |
|---|---|
| State law | State law governs this work. Check the statutes, court rules and conduct rules of the state where the matter is. Do not import an Australian statute, form or court AI practice note. |
| Defamation | State tort law with a First Amendment overlay. No uniform national Defamation Act. |
Precedents for this area
- Concerns notice under the uniform Defamation Acts (with UK letter-of-claim and NZ variants) (Notice, AI use Red). A concerns notice built to the s 12A requirements, with an internal check of every statutory element, the 28-day offer period and the limitation dates. Short UK and NZ variants are included.
- Offer to make amends in response to a concerns notice (Letter, AI use Yellow). A publisher's offer to make amends that tracks every mandatory item in s 15, the s 14 timing rules and the s 18 reasonableness factors, with correction and apology annexures.
- Pre-publication legal review checklist (including AI-generated text, images and quotes) (Checklist, AI use Yellow). A pre-publication legal read covering identification, meanings, defences, court-reporting restrictions, privacy and copyright, plus specific checks for AI-assisted text, transcripts, translations and synthetic images.
- Takedown demand for AI-generated deepfake or synthetic content (to poster or platform) (Letter, AI use Yellow). An urgent removal demand to a poster or platform about AI-generated or altered images, video or audio of the client, with selectable defamation, intimate-image, privacy and consumer-law bases and a safety check before sending.
- Complaint notice to a digital intermediary (s 31A accessible complaints mechanism) with UK and US variants (Notice, AI use Yellow). A short complaint to a platform, page owner or website operator that meets s 31A(3), starts the 7-day period for access prevention steps, and asks for poster data to be preserved. Includes the UK s 5 notice-of-complaint content.
- Newsroom and publisher generative AI and synthetic media policy (Policy, AI use Yellow). A publisher policy on generative AI: approved tools, confidential material, permitted and prohibited uses, verification, labels for synthetic media, legal review triggers, copyright, privacy and records.
All precedents for Defamation & Media Law. Signed-in accounts can read the full text.