Should AI fill gaps between documented events to make a witness account coherent?

No. Preserve gaps and ask the witness and counsel to address them without inventing facts or recollection.

Build a source chronology for a DIFC witness statement

Executive summary

Build the chronology from identified sources and keep the witness’s recollection distinct from documentary evidence. Counsel and the witness must review any proposed statement.

Attribute each event to its source.

Mark uncertainty and conflicting accounts.

Do not convert an inference into the witness’s recollection.

Set the evidential boundary

A chronology for a DIFC dispute may draw on emails, meeting records, contracts, and interview notes. Identify which material is contemporaneous and which records later recollection.

Confirm the applicable rules and directions for the statement with counsel. The chronology is working material, not evidence that every recorded event has been established.

Record the source of each event

Use fields for date, event, participant, source document, passage, and confidence in the date. Distinguish the date of an email from the date of the event described inside it.

If the witness recalls an event without a supporting document, record that basis accurately. Do not invent a document reference to make the entry appear more complete.

Handle conflicting accounts

Suppose an email says a meeting was postponed while an interview note places it on the original date. Preserve both accounts and ask the witness and counsel to resolve the discrepancy.

A model may create a smooth narrative by selecting one version. The working chronology should instead make the conflict easy to see and trace.

Use drafting assistance carefully

Draft from approved facts and instructions, keeping recollection, inference, and documentary quotations distinguishable. Avoid adding connective detail merely because it makes the narrative read naturally.

The witness must review the proposed account and counsel must check the procedural requirements. AI output does not establish what the witness knows or remembers.

Preserve the review record

Keep the source chronology, questions asked, approved corrections, and final statement version in the matter file. Record unresolved matters that affect the case analysis.

When new evidence arrives, identify which entries and draft passages it changes. A traceable revision is more useful than replacing the chronology without explaining why the account moved.

Sources and next steps

This is an editorial workflow guide for legal professionals. The suggested checks are our practical recommendations, not a statement that a regulator requires a particular software workflow.

DIFC Courts: current rules

Explore Timeline Builder and Case Strategy, or review Judicio's regional coverage and limitations. Check the underlying source and your organisation's approved process before relying on an output.