The obligations this office works to, stated in full.

Everything on this page is the sort of thing a cross-examiner will test. It is published so that an instructing solicitor can check it before briefing rather than discover it at a hearing.

Paramount duty

The paramount duty of an expert witness is to the court or tribunal, and it prevails over any duty owed to the party who retains or pays the expert. Every report prepared by this office contains an acknowledgment that the applicable code of conduct has been read and will be complied with, and the report is written so that the acknowledgment is demonstrably true on the face of it.

Instructions are reproduced in the report, in full, in the terms they were given.
Facts observed are separated from facts assumed and from opinion.
Every opinion states the reasoning and the material relied on to reach it.
Where an opinion is provisional, or rests on an assumption that may not hold, that is stated at the point the opinion is expressed and not in a general disclaimer.
Where a matter falls outside the expert's field, that is stated rather than answered.
Where a change of opinion occurs after a report is served, a supplementary report is provided promptly.

Conflicts

A conflict check is run before any brief is opened. Parties and site address are all that is needed to run it. Where a conflict or a perceived conflict exists, the engagement is declined and no material is retained. Where a possible perception issue exists but the engagement can properly proceed, it is disclosed in writing to the instructing solicitor before acceptance, so the decision is theirs.

Standing disclosures

Some interests are worth stating before anyone has to ask. The principal holds a commercial interest in Civil & Slabs Pty Ltd, a company carrying out excavation, formwork and concreting for driveways, footings and slabs, and holds builder's licences in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Instructions are declined where that company, its work, or any party it has contracted with is connected to the matter. The interest is disclosed to instructing solicitors on engagement and is stated in the interests declaration in every report, whether or not it is relevant to the matter in hand.

Director and shareholder, Civil & Slabs Pty Ltd, excavation, formwork and concreting, 2021 to present.
Licensed Builder NSW 310240 and Licensed Builder ACT 2023299.
Office holder, Australian Society of Building Consultants, and committee member of Standards Australia BD-002-11, the ACRA EN 1504 working group and the Concrete Institute of Australia NSW committee.
Any engagement connected to those companies, committees or their members is declined, or the connection is disclosed in writing before acceptance so the decision to proceed is the instructing solicitor's.

Authority

The instruments applied

NCAT Procedural Direction 3 — Expert Evidence: Governs expert evidence in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, including the expert witness code of conduct, the required form of a report, and conclave and joint report procedure.
Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 2005 (NSW), Schedule 7 and rule 31.23: The expert witness code of conduct applying in the NSW courts, and the rule requiring an expert to acknowledge it before the report is admissible.
Evidence Act 1995 (NSW), section 79: The opinion rule exception for specialised knowledge, which is why a report has to make plain both the field of expertise and how the opinion is wholly or substantially based on it.
Makita (Australia) Pty Ltd v Sprowles [2001] NSWCA 305: The authority on exposing an expert's reasoning. It is the reason reports from this office set out the facts, the assumptions and the path from them to the conclusion, rather than stating a conclusion and attaching a curriculum vitae.
VCAT Practice Note PNVCAT2 — Expert Evidence: The Victorian equivalent, applying where a matter is heard in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Clause 13 sets out what an expert report must contain, including all instructions defining the scope, a signed declaration in the form the practice note prescribes, and, where relevant, a generative AI disclosure.
Harmonised Expert Witness Code of Conduct: The code developed by the Council of Chief Justices' Rules Harmonisation Committee and adopted by the Supreme Court of Western Australia under Consolidated Practice Direction 4.5.2.1, with expert conferences and concurrent evidence dealt with at 4.5.2.2 and 4.5.2.3. It applies to engagements in that Court.
Home Building Act 1989 (NSW) and the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (NSW): The statutory warranty and duty of care frameworks that most residential defect matters are pleaded under, and which shape how defect items and schedules are structured.

SC Gen 23 and NCAT PD7

Use of generative artificial intelligence

Three instruments govern this work. Practice Note SC Gen 23, which commenced on 3 February 2025 in the Supreme Court of NSW; NCAT Procedural Direction 7, which commenced on 7 April 2025; and, in Victorian matters, VCAT Practice Note PNVCAT 11, with the disclosure requirement carried into clause 13(l) of PNVCAT2. The NSW instruments prohibit the use of generative AI to draft or prepare the content of an expert report without leave, and all of them impose disclosure obligations where AI is used. This office keeps a contemporaneous register of AI use on every matter, whichever forum the matter is in. Not every jurisdiction has issued a binding instrument. Where a court has not, this office applies the strictest of the instruments above rather than the local minimum, so that the position does not change with the venue and does not have to be explained differently to each tribunal.

Not used, on any matter

Drafting or preparing the content of an expert report, or any part of it, without leave of the court or tribunal.
Forming, generating or influencing an opinion.
Generating, summarising or paraphrasing the evidence, the reasoning, or the analysis in a report.
Producing citations to standards, cases or legislation. Every citation in a report is checked against the source document.
Uploading briefs, privileged material, party information or site material to any tool that is not approved for the matter and covered by the register.

Used, and recorded when it is

Optical character recognition, so that scanned briefs and schedules become searchable text.
Mechanical extraction and re-tabulation of a schedule that already exists in the material, followed by a line-by-line check against the source.
Indexing and chronology of documents in a brief, checked against the documents.
Administrative work outside the report, such as correspondence formatting, fee proposals and internal file management.
Language and typographical checking of text already written by the expert.

The register

For each matter the register records the date, the matter, the tool and version used, the purpose, what was submitted to it, what was produced, and what checking was carried out against the source. Where leave has been granted and AI use is disclosed in a report, the relevant extract from the register is annexed to the report, as NCAT Procedural Direction 7 paragraph 22(b) requires. The register is available to an instructing solicitor on request, and to a court or tribunal on request.

If you need to put it to me

Instructing solicitors are welcome to ask for the AI use position on a matter in writing before briefing, and to receive the register extract for that matter. It is better to have that document in your hand before a hearing than to find out what it says at the same time as the other side.

This page is reviewed whenever the practice notes change, and at least annually. Last reviewed 05/09/2026.