Every legal conference in 2026 will host a panel on AI evidence. This one is fundamentally different. It delivers the construction bar’s first post-amendment analysis of new FRE 707 and its critical interplay with still-recent revisions to FRE 702 —CSC 2026 is the first major construction forum after the May 2026 Advisory Committee vote. This new framework creates three new evidentiary gates for proponents of AI-generated evidence: (1) “sponsorship election” gate — whether to offer AI output through an expert or as freestanding evidence, and the resulting “double gatekeeping” trap; (2) the “reliable application” gate under FRE 702(d) when the AI tool is a black box; and (3) upstream discovery gate — “reliability discovery” against third-party vendors, trade-secret objections, and spoliation of “living” models. These gates will force parties to make key admissibility decisions at the start of disputes, not the eve of trial. Parallel state-law regimes (e.g., Louisiana Act 470) will also be addressed. A bench consisting of an AI legal scholar, construction GC, cost-and-schedule expert, and seasoned trial lawyers, will work real world scenarios showing how these critical gates will drive future litigation risks and strategies. Attendees leave with a deployable digital litigation playbook, not a survey.
