THE SIGNAL
On May 7, 2026, the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules met in Washington and took up proposed new Rule 707, which had been published for public comment in August 2025. Its May 17, 2026 report to the Standing Committee says: "The Committee does not recommend action on the proposed Rule 707 at this time." Instead, it revised the draft and plans further study.
The revised draft is titled "Evidence Produced by Artificial Intelligence and Presented at Trial Without an Expert." Under it, the proponent must establish that the evidence "is based on sufficient facts or data" and "is the product of reliable principles and methods." It adds that admissibility "ordinarily requires the proponent to provide an expert to explain how the system of artificial intelligence reliably produced the evidence," with other proof allowed only "in exceptional circumstances." It also adds a notice requirement.
The report says the revised rule would need to be published again before it could go forward, and that the Committee wants it vetted by technology experts at its Fall meeting. Nothing is final. The direction is clear enough to plan around.
BEFORE
Hypothetical: a litigation team has an AI-assisted analysis of years of transaction data ready to use as a trial exhibit. The analysis is documented, the inputs are logged, and the associate's memo lays out two paths: offer the exhibit through a retained expert, or offer it without one and be ready to defend its reliability.
Only the trial partner can choose. The partner is in a deposition all week, and the expert disclosure deadline is two weeks away.
The file is ready. The person who can release it is not.
WHAT THE WAIT COSTS
If the choice comes late, the team may miss the window to retain and prepare an expert, or give the other side late notice of the exhibit. Either way, the reliability fight lands in front of the judge on worse terms than it needed to.
AFTER
The firm treats "expert or no expert" as a named decision with a due date tied to the disclosure deadline. The trial partner gets one packet: what the exhibit shows, how it was produced, the reliability evidence, the notice plan and the associate's recommendation.
The partner decides between deposition sessions, the reason goes in the file, and the team moves.
HOW WISDOMTWIN FITS
WisdomTwin.ai is building a sovereign judgment layer for regulated enterprises. It is designed to give each named approver a role-specific judgment twin that prepares the decision packet the way that person reviews, with the evidence attached, so the decision moves faster and leaves an auditable record. It is designed to run on-premises, on-device or in your private cloud, and the named person still makes the call.
We don't replace judgment. We remove the wait.
TRY THIS THIS WEEK
List every exhibit in your active trial matters that was produced with AI tools.
For each one, write down who decides whether it goes in through an expert, and by what date.
Read the revised Rule 707 draft in the Committee's May 17, 2026 report and note what notice you would give today if it applied.
SOURCES
Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, Report to the Standing Committee, May 17, 2026 (in the June 3-4, 2026 Standing Committee agenda book): Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, May 2026 report (PDF)
Examples in this issue are hypothetical, and nothing here describes a customer result.
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Roman Bodnarchuk
Co-Founder and CEO, WisdomTwin.ai