By Bill Hartzer · Published · How this site is researched
Contemporaneous record. The expert maintains, as the work proceeds, a record of each system used, the purpose for which it was used, and what was done to verify its output. The record is made at the time and is capable of being produced.
The clause that makes the others provable
Sequence, non-delegation, verification and checkability are each things an expert either did or did not do, months before anyone asks. The log is the only artifact that says which. Nobody sees what it is worth until the day it is the only thing between the witness and a question with no other answer.
Contemporaneous means made at or near the time of the event, before its significance was known. That is where the evidentiary weight comes from, since the author had no reason to shape an entry whose importance had not yet appeared. Reconstruction is usually detectable. Rebuilt entries are uniform, explanatory and complete in exactly the places real logs are thin. Promising the log in the engagement letter, alongside the commitment in Clause 8, shows that keeping it was a practice adopted before anyone knew what it would contain.
Entries that hold up
An entry has seven fields: the date of the work; the task in a sentence; the tool, account and tier; the substance of what was asked; what was done to verify the output; the disposition (adopted, adopted after verification, set aside or superseded); and the paths to any script, export or list it refers to. A short header records why each tool was chosen for the matter. Days of substantive work with no tool are logged too.
The common failure is recording the use and stopping. "Used AI to check citations" tells a reader nothing. An entry stating that every citation was extracted to a list, each located at the issuing source, some corrected and some removed, with the list's file path, is the defense itself. Corrections are added as new dated lines rather than edits, and gaps are acknowledged rather than filled. Conclusions about the case, communications from counsel and speculation about anyone's conduct stay out. The log template gives the blank form.
Questions a log would have answered
In Riddle Aggregates (Tax Court rebuttal expert), the judge said on the record that she was not clear from the witness's answers what he had used to write his rebuttal reports, which cited sections of the Yellow Book that do not exist. The Commissioner withdrew both reports mid-trial, and no written order addresses the AI question. In Butler and National Disability Insurance Agency, the decisive question was who inserted a single phrase, and the reports lost weight partly because no record could settle it.
Villanueva v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows the reverse value of organization. After its own in camera review, the district court divided an expert's ChatGPT history: case-law summaries were ordered produced as facts or data he considered, while his prompts, a deposition outline and draft output were protected. A record kept by purpose would have let the expert separate those categories himself.
Not a transcript, not a shadow report
The clause does not require transcribing every query. An entry covers an occasion of work, so an afternoon of searching is one line stating what was found, what was obtained and read, and what was cited. Nor does keeping a log create exposure that would otherwise be absent. The provider already holds a verbatim history in a form the expert cannot organize; the only choice is whether a second, orderly record exists alongside it. Session exports taken on a schedule help preserve that history, but they are snapshots without chain of custody, and they omit what was deleted.
The rules it sits beside
The Standard does not restate any court rule and does not depend on one. In United States federal courts, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 requires disclosure of the facts or data an expert considered, and a contemporaneous record is how that question is answered. Other systems ask the same questions in their own terms, and the matters below include tribunals in several of them.
Matters in the record that engaged Clause 7
44 of the 103 matters in AI in the Courtroom engaged this clause. Each is listed with the sentence from its entry that says how. The mapping describes conduct, not blame, and each entry sets out the facts it rests on.
Expert witnesses and AI
- Villanueva v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what would have let the expert separate the categories the court separated: research, deposition preparation and drafting.”
- Watson Grinding explosion trial (3M expert) “The matter also shows Clause 7, contemporaneous record, operating in an unexpected direction.”
- Bard Port Catheter MDL (El-Ghannam ChatGPT challenge) “The conduct engaged Clause 7 of the Standard, contemporaneous record, from the defending side.”
- Conservation Law Foundation v. Shell (expert AI prompts) “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what makes a request like Shell's easy to answer.”
- Riddle Aggregates (Tax Court rebuttal expert) “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what Judge Kerrigan was reaching for when she said she was not clear what the witness used to write the report.”
- Landgericht Darmstadt expert fee decision “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is engaged by what the court had to do instead: with no record of how the document was produced, it reasoned from the shape of the prose.”
- In re Valsartan MDL (Dr. William Sawyer) “An expert who confirms each citation before signing, and records that step under Clause 7, avoids giving opposing counsel that line of questioning.”
- Butler and National Disability Insurance Agency “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what would have answered the question Butler turned on.”
- NSW Supreme Court Practice Note SC Gen 23 “The records and annexure requirement in paragraph 22 corresponds to Clause 7, contemporaneous record: the expert must keep a record of how the tool was used and put it before the court.”
- Kohls v. Ellison “The court's suggestion that counsel ask witnesses about AI use points toward Clause 8, disclosure, and Clause 7, contemporaneous record, since an expert who has logged each use can answer that question precisely.”
- Matter of Weber “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, follows directly.”
Fabricated citations and facts in filings
- Deepak Raheja v. Omkara Assets Reconstruction “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what the Advocate-on-Record lacked when he could neither say what the compilation contained nor show who prepared it.”
- Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co. v. United States “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, and Clause 8, disclosure, describe what the court asked for, an account of who or what wrote each passage.”
- Henry v. Long Island University “The record of that check, under Clause 7, is what allows the certification to be defended.”
- In re Rosslyn2016 (a legal research tool is still a tool) “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is the other half.”
- Lnu v. Blanche (Ninth Circuit suspension) “It is, in substance, a court-imposed version of Clause 7 and Clause 8 combined: a record, and a statement about it, filed each time.”
- Whiting v. City of Athens “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, and Clause 8, disclosure, explain why the court's questions mattered.”
- Kjoller v. Superior Court (Nevada County DA) “The prosecutorial setting adds weight to Clause 8 (disclosure) and Clause 7 (contemporaneous record).”
AI-generated and altered evidence
- TRAX International Corp. v. United States “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what would have answered the court's questions about distribution.”
- Fry v. Fry (Claude upload and sealing) “The certification engages Clause 7, contemporaneous record, and Clause 8, disclosure, together.”
- Shealy v. Seaside Investments
- Assini v. Hayward (subpoena to OpenAI quashed) “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is the practical answer to a subpoena of this kind.”
- Tate Group Automotive v. Legacy Automotive Capital “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what makes the list producible.”
- Tym v. Cerno (AI work product) “The privilege log requirement is Clause 7, contemporaneous record, arriving as an order.”
- Morgan v. V2X (AI work product) “The order to name the platform engages Clause 7, contemporaneous record.”
- Burnley v. Valentin
- United States v. Heppner “It also bears on Clause 7, contemporaneous record, and Clause 8, disclosure.”
- Warner v. Gilbarco (ChatGPT work product) “It also engages Clause 7, contemporaneous record, by implication.”
Judges, courts and AI
- Molawa v. Matjhabeng Local Municipality “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, bears on the chairperson's silence: asked for the authorities, he produced nothing, and the court treated that as part of the prima facie case.”
- Payne v. State “The affidavit here also shows the value of Clause 7.”
- ARIHQ v. Santé Québec, 2026 QCCS 1360
- In re Domestic Partnership of Torres Campos and Munoz “Clause 2, non-delegation, frames the same event from the court's side, and Clause 7, contemporaneous record, explains why counsel could not say where the added Twigg details came from.”
- Senate Judiciary inquiry into judges' AI use “The inquiry also shows what happens when there is no contemporaneous record (Clause 7).”
- In re CorMedix Securities Litigation (Judge Neals) “The judge's account also bears on Clause 7.”
- Colombia: Cartagena ChatGPT ruling and Sentencia T-323/24 “The Court's finding that transparency and accountability were incomplete points to Clause 7, a contemporaneous record, and to Clause 3.”
- Snell v. United Specialty Insurance (Judge Newsom) “These are examples of use that met Clause 8 of the Expert Record Standard, disclosure, and Clause 7, contemporaneous record.”
AI inside the courtroom
- Arizona Supreme Court AI news reporters “Because every script is drafted and approved before it is voiced, the court can show at any later date who wrote the words and when they were approved, which is the purpose of a contemporaneous record, Clause 7.”
Rules, orders and guidance
- AI clauses in protective orders (Jeffries; Dunn) “Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what shows compliance after the fact.”
- Cherokee County Superior Court AI standing order “An expert with a contemporaneous record under Clause 7 can answer.”
- Connecticut Practice Book Section 4-9 (Generative AI) “Section 4-9(d) bears on Clause 7, contemporaneous record.”
- Draft Regulations for Use of AI in Courts, 2026 “Regulation 43(4) tracks Clause 8 of the Standard, disclosure, and Clause 7, contemporaneous record, closely: a court can only be told which system was used, how far, and how its output was verified if someone kept that record while the work was done.”
- Civil Justice Council consultation on AI in court documents “An expert can meet such a requirement accurately only if Clause 7 has been observed: a contemporaneous record of which system was used, for what purpose and on what material.”
- AI Judicial Guidance, England and Wales (October 2025) “Clauses 3 and 4 require the checks to have been made, and Clause 7 requires a record of them made at the time.”
- Judge Starr's AI certificate and the Fifth Circuit rule “An expert who keeps a contemporaneous record of AI use under Clause 7 can answer such a requirement without reconstructing events afterward.”
Clause 6: Custody and confidentiality · All eight clauses · Clause 8: Disclosure