PakistanNJPMC National Guidelines for the Use of AI in Judicial Institutions, approved at the 57th meeting on 29 April 2026: AI is to assist, not replace, judges; permitted for case management, legal research, predictive analytics and document processing, with data-protection and training safeguards. High Courts retain implementation autonomy. The official text is not online.
Regulation Tracker · Country · Asia-Pacific
Pakistan
Developingmixedupdated 2026-09-04verified 2026-09-04
As of 4 September 2026 Pakistan's position is judge-led. Ishfaq Ahmed v Mushtaq Ahmed (Supreme Court, April 2025) endorsed AI as an assistive tool, warned of hallucinations and directed the judicial policy committee to frame guidelines; the NJPMC approved National Guidelines for AI in Judicial Institutions on 29 April 2026. No bar rules and no statute.
As of 2026-09-04, Pakistan has 0 binding rules, official guidance in 4 categories, 0 proposals and 1 position set only by case law across the 20 categories in the map. In 14 categories we found nothing; in 1 the position is not yet determined.
How to read this page
- Binding rule Binding rule means a rule in force from a court, statute, regulator or equivalent authority.
- Official guidance Official guidance means an official non-binding position from a judiciary, regulator, bar or public body.
- Proposed / consultation Proposed / consultation means a public bill, draft rule or consultation that is not yet in force.
- Set by case law Set by case law means no rule was found, but courts have set the position in decisions.
- Nothing found Nothing found means the category was checked and no rule, guidance, proposal or case-law position was found.
- Not yet determined Not yet determined means research did not establish a reliable position yet.
The rules, category by category
The NJPMC guidelines of 29 April 2026 keep judicial decision-making firmly in human hands. Ishfaq Ahmed (2025) held that AI must never supplant judicial discretion and must respect the Article 10A fair-trial right.
The NJPMC guidelines of April 2026 frame institutional AI adoption. The Federal Judicial Academy's Judge-GPT, a retrieval system over roughly 130,000 Pakistani judgments, was trialled from 2024 with about 1,559 trial judges; results published in August 2026 showed a 6.3 per cent rise in disposals.
The NJPMC guidelines provide for structured AI training for judges and court staff, and the Judge-GPT trial ran six ninety-minute training sessions with the Federal Judicial Academy. There is no requirement for lawyers.
Ishfaq Ahmed v Mushtaq Ahmed (Supreme Court, April 2025): AI output including large-language-model legal references may be fabricated, and human oversight is essential to verify AI-generated content before reliance. The holding applies to judges; there is no lawyer-facing rule.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No bar guidance found. The NJPMC guidelines refer to privacy and data-security standards for court use only.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No rule, guidance or reported case found as of 4 September 2026.
No Pakistan Bar Council or provincial bar guidance on generative AI found as of 4 September 2026.
No general data-protection statute is in force and no regulator guidance on legal AI was found as of 4 September 2026.
No reported costs, contempt or disciplinary order for AI-fabricated citations found as of 4 September 2026. The 2023 Phalia sessions-court use of GPT-4 was a judge's experiment, not a sanction.
No institutional arbitration or ADR AI rules found as of 4 September 2026; Ishfaq Ahmed observed that mediation and ADR cannot be replaced by AI.
No procurement or vendor due-diligence guidance for legal AI found as of 4 September 2026.
A federal National AI Policy was reported approved in 2025 but could not be verified from an official source within the research budget; no AI statute or risk classification applies to courts.
Official documents recorded for Pakistan (2)
- National Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Judicial Institutions
NJPMC · revised 2026-04-29 · verified 2026-09-04
- Ishfaq Ahmed v Mushtaq Ahmed, 2025 SCP 112 (PLD 2025 SC 582)
Supreme Court of Pakistan · revised 2025-04-08 · verified 2026-09-04
Court incidents on the record in Pakistan
- Yichang District Court (Hubei)2026-07-21 Warning
Cite this page
SafeLegalAI Legal AI Regulation Tracker, "Pakistan" (updated 2026-09-04, verified 2026-09-04), https://safelegalai.com/regulation/country/pk (accessed 2026-09-04). Data: CC BY 4.0.
SafeLegalAI is a research publication by Cognesio LLP, not a law firm. Nothing here is legal advice, and no lawyer–client relationship arises from reading it. Rules change; always check the official document linked on each record and take advice on your own situation. Researched and drafted with AI assistance; verified against primary sources and edited by Cognesio LLP. The linked official documents are the record — our summaries are not the law and are not legal advice.