What Trinidad's New AI Court Rule Means for a Commercial Dispute

On 8 July 2026 a new Practice Direction on generative AI took effect in the Trinidad and Tobago courts. Chief Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh issued it the day before. It reached the Gazette the day after. It binds everyone who comes to court: judges, attorneys, litigants, witnesses, and experts.

The timing was not academic. Not long before it, a High Court judge had sent two attorneys to the Disciplinary Committee for citing cases that did not exist. The citations had come from an AI tool. No one had checked them.

What the rule requires

The rule does not ban the technology. It draws a line around it. AI can help with drafting and routine work. It cannot stand in for judgment and it cannot make the evidence.

Three duties matter most. A party who uses AI on a court document must say so and name the tool. Every authority and citation must be checked against the real source before it is filed. Affidavits and witness statements stay off-limits, beyond help with language and formatting. Where the rule is ignored, the court can order further disclosure and impose sanctions.

Judges face their own limit. They may use AI for administration and research. They may not use it to reason through a case or to write a judgment.

Trinidad is not the first

Courts elsewhere have already drawn this line. Jamaica issued its own Practice Direction on generative AI in September 2025. Singapore has guided court users since October 2024. The UK courts have guided judges since 2023 and revised that guidance twice. Each arrives at the same place. The tool is allowed. The responsibility for what is filed cannot be handed to it. What marks Trinidad out is teeth. The rule sets out sanctions, and the local courts have already disciplined attorneys over fabricated citations.

Why this matters in a dispute

Read one way, it is housekeeping. To a litigator it is two things at once: a risk to manage and a point of leverage.

The risk sits on your own side. If your team files an authority it has not read, the exposure is no longer a lost point. It is a disclosure failure, a possible sanction, and a referral that follows the lawyer rather than the client. Speed is not a defence.

The leverage sits across the table. A fabricated case in the other side's submissions was always weak. Now it is a breach of a standing rule, and the court has said plainly what it will do about it. That is worth watching for.

The duty is old, the tool is new

None of this is really about AI. Counsel has always had to stand behind every case it cites. What changed is how easy it became to file something no one had confirmed. A tool can now produce a citation in seconds. It looks perfect. The case never happened.

The rule puts an old standard back on a new tool. It asks for one thing: read the authority before you rely on it. Good counsel always did. For a business weighing how a dispute is run, that is the useful signal. Ask how your own team works and how the other side does.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Practice Direction stop lawyers using AI in Trinidad courts? No. AI is allowed for drafting and administrative work. The tool must be disclosed, and every fact and authority checked against the source. It cannot generate evidence or stand in for judicial reasoning.

What happens if a filed citation turns out to be false? The court can require further disclosure and impose sanctions. An attorney can also be referred to the Disciplinary Committee, as has already happened in Trinidad.

Does this change the law of my dispute? No. It changes procedure and conduct, not substance. It does add a duty on your side and a pressure point on the other, both worth weighing from the start.