That is the question at the heart of the court appeal launched by Charlie Maxwell Forster, an intellectually disabled young man who was the first person to be jailed under the state government's controversial consorting laws.

Mr Forster, now 25, was found guilty of habitually consorting with convicted offenders despite official warnings, after he was caught in separate conversations with three men he was friends with in Inverell, in northern NSW, in 2012.

He has asked the NSW Supreme Court to overturn his conviction, saying the sentencing magistrate Michael O'Brien erred in his interpretation of the term consorting.

In a hearing on Wednesday, Mr Forster's barrister David Randle said it was unclear whether all conversation could be construed as consorting or what the "minimum level of interaction need be".

"The only conduct observed is a conversation of some indeterminate length," Mr Randle said of his client's alleged consorting.

"To construe the provision with reference to what the plaintiff describes as a very general concept of conversation is problematic. It doesn't exclude conversational interactions like the mere exchange of pleasantries."

The O'Farrell government passed the new consorting laws in April 2012 following a spate of gun violence involving bikies and organised crime groups.

But a review of the laws by the NSW State Ombudsman, released earlier this year, found they were being used by police to tackle minor crimes and were hitting vulnerable groups including Aboriginal people, children and the homeless.

In his judgment, Magistrate O'Brien found that Forster's meeting with the men could have been "chance encounters" but determined that the accused had at "some point in time ... formed the the intention of seeking out the company of the other".

But Mr Randle said there were "serious deficiencies" in Magistrate O'Brien's reasoning, and that the evidence was such that "nothing more could be said of them other than that they were engaged in conversation."

"There's no evidence about the content, theres no evidence as to duration, the evidence in respect to location and time of day are both squarely matters in the Plaintiff's favour, it is the middle of the day in a main thoroughfare in Inverell," Mr Randle said.

Joanna Davidson, the barrister for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said Magistrate O'Brien had not erred and had made it clear that meeting casually with an acquaintance was not considered consorting.

Ms Davidson said there was an "intentional seeking out and acceptance" of company that had enabled a finding of consorting.

Mr Forster was sentenced for consorting, along with other offences, to a non-parole period of nine months imprisonment. He has served his sentence but remains in jail over other criminal offences.

He had previously teamed up with two members of the Nomads bikie gang to unsuccessfully challenge the laws in the High Court on the grounds that they infringed an implied right to freedom of association and freedom of political communication in the constitution.

Justice Lucy McCallum is expected to make a decision on Forster's appeal in September.