The book · Hartzer Press
Q. Show me your prompts. A. Certainly. Here is the entire record.
The Standard for Expert Witnesses Using AI
Artificial intelligence did not create a new way for an expert to be wrong. It created a new record of how the expert got there. That record is complete, timestamped, verbatim, and held by someone else, and it is increasingly producible in discovery. This book is the working method for making sure yours would survive being read aloud.
About the book Read the Standard
By Bill Hartzer · 32 chapters in 8 parts · 9 appendices · The Standard, version 1.0
Formats and retailers will be announced here. To be told when the book is available, write to [email protected].
Why the book exists
The question every expert will be asked
Did you use artificial intelligence in preparing this report? The question is already being asked at deposition, in retention interviews, and in written discovery. Before long it will be asked in every matter. There are two kinds of answers to it. One describes a method. The other describes a habit, and a habit does not hold up well under cross-examination.
The Expert Record is written for the first kind of answer. It does not argue that experts should avoid these systems, and it does not argue that they should embrace them. It sets out a way of working that holds up under examination whichever you choose, drawn from the way careful professionals in every discipline have always protected their independence. The expert who uses nothing at all needs it too, because I don't use it has to be an answer you can support rather than one you merely believe.
What the book gives you
A method you can state, show, and defend
Six things the book puts in your hands, each built to work in any discipline and on any system.
The Standard
A standard you can adopt
Eight clauses on one page, licensed for verbatim use in engagement letters, retention agreements, and firm policies.
The taxonomy
A way to sort any task
Green, yellow, and red. Every task is classified by what has to happen between a system's output and your adoption of it.
The method
A method for evidence at scale
A six-step examination method for productions too large to read, and the reason every count in your report is a script rather than a conversation.
The record
A record that defends itself
The contemporaneous log and the verification pass: what goes in, what never does, and why an entry that records only use is incomplete.
The deposition
An answer that ends the topic
The questions you will be asked, the answers you should be able to give without preparation, and the trap questions that sound damaging and are not.
For counsel
Chapters written to lawyers
Four chapters for the attorneys who retain, vet, and examine experts, plus a box at the end of every chapter addressed to counsel.
The Expert Record Standard
Eight clauses. One page. Free to adopt.
The Standard is the centerpiece of the book and the part designed to travel. Each clause states one obligation in one sentence. An expert can put it in an engagement letter, a firm can put it in a retention agreement, and anyone may reproduce it verbatim with attribution. The book is the argument for why these are the right eight clauses, and the practice that sits around them.
The governing test
An engagement satisfies this standard when a competent examiner in the same field, working only from the primary sources, with no access to any artificial intelligence system, could reproduce the expert's result.
Inside the book
Eight parts, from retention to the witness stand
The book follows an engagement in the order it actually happens, then turns to the lawyers on both sides of the table. The appendices are working materials meant to be copied and used: the log template, engagement letter provisions, the verification checklist, deposition question sets, and the preservation protocol.
- Part I
The Record You Are Already Making
Three Hundred and Fifty Pages · The Line That Is Actually Being Drawn · What the Machine Keeps · Instrument or Source · Five Ways It Fails · Why “We Don’t Let Our Experts Use AI” Is Not a Policy
- Part II
The Engagement, Stage by Stage
Retention and Scope · Intake and Inventory · Green, Yellow, Red · Two Rules Without Exception
- Part III
Research and Investigation
Reconstructing the Past · Documents, Filings, and Transcripts at Scale · Standards, Specifications, and the Literature
- Part IV
Digital Evidence at Scale
Productions Too Large to Read · A Six-Step Examination Method · Script the Analysis; Do Not Chat with the Evidence · Handling, Confidentiality, and the Protective Order
- Part V
Discovery of the Record
Your Method Is Discoverable · What Is Protected, and What Is Not · Preserving the Record · Producing It When Asked
- Part VI
The Report
A Report Is Not One Kind of Writing · Independence as a Working Practice · Limitations, and the Sentences That Keep a Finding Standing
- Part VII
Proving the Method
The Independent-Source Rule and the Verification Pass · The Governing Test · The Contemporaneous Log · The Deposition
- Part VIII
For Counsel, and for Everyone Else
Vetting an Expert’s AI Use at Retention · Examining the Other Side’s Expert · Reading the Rules as They Move · If You Never Testify
Who this is for
Expert witnesses in every field, the lawyers who retain and examine them, and any professional whose signed work could one day become an exhibit.
If you are the expert
Start with the Standard, then the log
Read the eight clauses, decide whether you can work under them, and put the attribution line in your engagement letter. Then start the log template on the next matter you take. Not the next matter in which you use a system, the next matter, because a log that begins when you first think you need one begins too late. The pre-use checklist puts those decisions in order.
If you retain or examine experts
Start with the question sets
The book's question sets run in both directions: what to ask your own expert before the report is served, and what to ask the other side's expert once it has been. Knowing which questions only sound damaging saves an hour of transcript and a needless motion.
If you are neither, yet
Start with what courts have actually done
The pattern in the reported matters is not the one the commentary describes. Sanctions have fallen on the lawyers who signed filings far more often than on experts. Read the matters themselves and see what was done in each.
Maintained record
AI in the Courtroom
Real matters in which an AI system was used in litigation, with what the tribunal did, where each stands, and whether the court's own document was read.
- August 2026 · Expert witnesses and AIWatson Grinding explosion trial (3M expert)An engineering expert retained by 3M in Houston explosion litigation used ChatGPT to draft most of his report and produced about 350 pages of chat logs. He was examined on them at trial. The jury found 3M 30% responsible.
- August 31, 2026 · Rules, orders and guidanceAI clauses in protective orders (Jeffries; Dunn)In Kansas a magistrate judge extended AI restrictions from confidential material to all discovery materials, barring open AI tools. In Colorado a magistrate judge entered an agreed AI provision but refused to require consent before each new tool.
- August 21, 2026 · Fabricated citations and facts in filingsState v. Sandoval (Aarons sanction)Appellate counsel in a New Mexico murder appeal filed a brief prepared with ChatGPT that described nonexistent witnesses and testimony. The New Mexico Supreme Court held him in contempt, ordered $5,000, removed him and referred him to the Disciplinary Board.
- August 12, 2026 · Expert witnesses and AIBard Port Catheter MDL (El-Ghannam ChatGPT challenge)A plaintiffs' materials-science expert acknowledged at deposition that he used ChatGPT among other tools. The court declined to reach the AI argument, noting it was raised for the first time on reply and that no fabricated citation had been identified in the report at issue.
- August 12, 2026 · Judges, courts and AIPhillips v. Parlade (judicial immunity and AI)A plaintiff alleged that a state court judge relied wholly on artificial intelligence to issue a ruling without human judgment. The federal court held that absolute judicial immunity bars the claim even assuming the allegation is true, and dismissed with prejudice.
The full record covers expert witnesses, fabricated citations in filings, AI-generated evidence, judges' orders, AI inside the courtroom, and the rules written in response. Start with the AI in the Courtroom index, or go straight to the matters involving expert witnesses.
The companion site
What the book leaves out on purpose
The book names no cases, no products, and no model versions. Decisions get appealed and superseded, and platform policies change without notice, so a book that names them is a book that expires. The Expert Record was written to be correct in five years. Everything that carries a date lives here instead, where it can carry one honestly.
What this site will not do
It does not characterize a holding. Entries in the case record state what a professional did and what a tribunal did, with the date the entry was last checked against the primary document, and they stop there. Where the book argues about what a decision means, it does so in the book, under an argument the reader can see and disagree with.
It gives no legal advice, and nothing on it substitutes for counsel in your own matter. It ranks no systems, reviews no products, and will never tell you which model to use. That question is both the least durable one in the field and the one that matters least to whether your work survives cross-examination.
It is not a news feed. A great deal is published in this area every week, most of it summarizing the same handful of orders. The AI in the Courtroom record carries a selection of those matters, each with its sourcing stated and a checked-on date. If you are deciding where to begin, adopting the Standard is the step that changes your position soonest, because it is stated at retention rather than argued afterward.
The editorial rules the site is written under, and who maintains it, are set out on the about page.