The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) has launched a Generative AI Guide to accompany the previously released Active Learning Best Practice Guide, providing litigators in the courts of England and Wales with proposed guidance regarding how genAI might be used when adhering to the Practice Direction in the Business and Property Courts.
The new guide, co-chaired by Fiona Campbell of Fieldfisher and Tom Whitaker of Burges Salmon, with David Wilkins of Norton Rose Fulbright, James MacGregor of Ethical eDiscovery, Jonathan Howell, Jamie Tomlinson, & Imogen Jones of DAC Beachcroft, builds upon ILTA’s successful Active Learning Best Practice Guide, which was submitted to the Master of the Rolls in 2024 and is currently under review.
Both guides address a critical gap in Practice Direction 57AD for the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, which encourages the use of technology in disclosure but does not provide prescriptive practical guidance on its implementation. This gap has led to inconsistent approaches across the profession and unnecessary negotiations between parties.
Campbell said: ‘GenAI presents both significant opportunities and unique challenges for legal disclosure. What’s particularly valuable is that the validation methodologies developed for Active Learning, such as elusion testing and precision/recall metrics, can be applied to validate GenAI outputs as well. This natural synergy is why building the GenAI guidance as an addendum to the Active Learning Guide makes perfect sense.’
Tom Whitaker added: ‘By deploying Active Learning alongside GenAI, legal teams can enhance the defensibility of their disclosure process while preserving efficiency gains. Active Learning’s transparent, measurable, and reproducible nature helps mitigate the risks associated with GenAI’s non-deterministic foundation models.’
The GenAI Addendum covers essential topics including:
Appropriate use cases for GenAI in legal disclosure
Best practices for prompt design and management
Technical guardrails and validation methodologies
Integration with existing Active Learning workflows
Documentation and transparency recommendations
James MacGregor, Chair of ILTA’s Litigation Special Interest Group and co-chair of the original Active Learning Guide with David Wilkins of Norton Rose Fulbright, commented: ‘These complementary guides provide a comprehensive framework for how to run a technology assisted review (TAR) disclosure, which aligns with the spirit of PD57AD while filling in the practical details it lacks. By standardising approaches across the industry, we aim to reduce unnecessary costs associated with negotiating methodologies on every case.’
And David Wilkins added: ‘While this guide has been written for application in litigation in the business and property courts of England and Wales, the principles articulated in it could be applied in disputes in different jurisdictions. This provides a framework for parties to agree the mechanics of using technology to conduct a document review, which should reduce the cost and time taken to complete disclosure/discovery, which is in the interests of all parties.’
The guide will be officially launched on May 6th at an ILTA event being hosted at Fieldfisher’s London office, featuring a panel discussion with the guide’s authors. Following the launch, the current draft will be available for industry review and feedback until the end of June 2025.
After the consultation period, feedback will be collated and reviewed by the ILTA working group, with the final document scheduled for publication in September 2025.