Adopted July 2026. BOTBOT is built by a practising barrister for the working Bar; this code states the principles the service is designed and operated under.
BOTBOT automates checking and collating, never judgment. Every operative decision, which barrister covers a hearing, what is said to a court, how work is allocated, is made by a person. Automated output is advisory, is presented with its reasoning, and can always be overridden.
Information published by the courts is displayed as published and treated as the authoritative source. BOTBOT flags differences for human review; it never silently corrects, amends or overrides what a court has published. Withdrawn or expired publications are removed automatically.
BOTBOT draws no conclusion about any member of the public. Names in court lists are used only to match listings to the cases in which a chambers is instructed. We build no profiles, ratings, predictions or histories of defendants, witnesses, complainants or any other person, and we provide no search of people across cases.
Judicial names are used solely to display listings as published and to detect changes to them. BOTBOT builds no analytics, profiles, comparisons or predictions concerning any judge, and judicial identity is excluded from the data supplied to any analytical function.
We collect and retain the minimum needed for the service to work. Listing data expires automatically at the end of its currency. Where artificial intelligence assists with internal suggestions, information identifying defendants is excluded and barristers are represented by neutral tokens. Court data is never sold, licensed onward, aggregated for resale or used for advertising.
Listing information is visible only to the authorised staff of the chambers it concerns. There is no public access, no republication in any form, no cross-chambers visibility and no bulk export. All listing data is hosted in the United Kingdom.
Suggestions about the allocation of work are generated only from objective professional criteria: availability, practice area, seniority, panel accreditation, workload and travel. No protected characteristic is collected or used. Suggestions and decisions are logged so that the distribution of work they influence can be reviewed, and the criteria are corrected or the feature withdrawn if review shows systematic skew.
We protect court and chambers data with layered controls: role-based access, chambers-level segregation enforced at the database, encrypted transport and storage, authenticated inbound channels and UK hosting. We pursue recognised security accreditation and independent testing, and we notify affected chambers and authorities promptly of any incident.
We describe what the software does in plain terms and do not overstate it. Automated components are validated before deployment, monitored in use, and re-validated when they change. Known limitations are documented rather than hidden.
This code binds everyone who works on BOTBOT. Concerns from any user, chambers, court or member of the public are investigated and answered: contact john@botbot.uk. We review this code at least annually and whenever the service materially changes, and we welcome independent review of our compliance with it.
Questions about this code: john@botbot.uk.