Case citation verification: no row, no citation

The risk in AI drafting is easy to state: a model can produce something that looks exactly like a case citation, with a real-sounding name, a reporter and a quotation, and nothing about its appearance tells you whether the case exists or says what the draft claims. Asking a model to be careful does not remove that risk. The engine takes a different approach: a case citation cannot exist in a draft unless it already exists as a verified row in the matter's citation ledger. Ideas can come from anywhere. Citations come only from sources.

Under the unverified-citation rule, a case citation exists only as a verified row in the matter's Citation Ledger, and a case citation without one cannot be printed. A model may propose a case from anywhere: its own training, a search, a hunch. None of that is a source. Drafting can type a case citation only from the ledger, and verification checks every one again before the document can be produced.

1. It comes from a primary source. The opinion is fetched from the court's own records or another primary source. A model's memory is never the source. See where the opinions come from.
2. It was read in full. The whole opinion is read, not a snippet or a summary, and any quotation is matched to the opinion word for word, with its page.
3. It supports the point. The facts, the holding and the disposition fit this issue in this posture. A case that only shares a phrase with the argument is rejected here.
4. It is still good law. The case is screened for negative treatment by a citator check, against a list of authorities already known to be bad.

These four are the standard. Some of the checks behind them are computed by the engine and some are judgments recorded by the verifier; what the engine enforces mechanically is the ledger join described below.

Terms like these are set out in the glossary: pincite and citator check defined.

Each case citation in a matter is one row. A row records:

• the case name, the citation, the court and the year
• the pincite and the exact words quoted
• where the text came from, and which research source produced it
• whether the opinion was read in full, and why it fits this matter
• the result of each of the four parts of the standard
• the citator result
• which agent proposed it, who verified it, and when

Illustration, fictional matter.

CITATION LEDGER · Avery v. City of Example (fictional) · row 12
case ............ Harlan v. Ostrander (fictional)
citation ........ 123 Ex. Rptr. 456, 461 (Example Sup. Ct. 2019) (fictional)
quotation ....... "leave to amend is not a formality" · matched at 461
source .......... primary · research source: rung 1 (engine database), text from the court's own server
read in full .... yes
fits because .... same posture: denial of leave to amend after one amendment
standard ........ primary source ✓ · read in full ✓ · supports the point ✓ · still good law ✓
citator ......... no negative treatment
proposed by ..... research ladder · verified by: verifier (not the drafter) · 2026-10-06 14:32 UTC

Before a document can be produced, a fresh verifier (never the drafter) runs the ledger join. It is one of the steps the engine's process marks as enforced, not merely recommended.

• Two passes. The first pass finds every full case citation in the draft. The second resolves every short form: Id. to the citation it follows, supra to the case it names.
• Joined by the citation, not the name. Each case citation is matched to its ledger row by reporter, volume and first page. Two cases with similar names can't stand in for each other.
• Blocked, not flagged. A case citation with no row blocks the document. So does a row that is incomplete, and so does a short form that can't be traced to a full citation.
• One warning. A case mentioned by name alone, without a reporter citation, is flagged with a warning rather than blocked.
• Checked again. The verifier also re-checks each case against its primary source, independently of the drafter's work.

Quotation and page. The join matches the case, not the page. Quotations and pincites are checked when the row is written and again in the verifier's independent re-check, not by the join itself.

What the block covers. The block covers case citations. Statute and rule citations are declared as their own class and checked by other steps: court rules against the official rule text the engine fetches, and statutes against their text, which is required before a statute is relied on. Statute text is retrieved from the source.

Citations from the second model. A case offered by the second model is a lead, never a source. It waits in quarantine until it passes the same standard and becomes a ledger row, or it goes no further.

Illustration, fictional matter. A static, pre-computed demo of the engine's rule. It is not the live engine, and it takes no input.

Five case citations are queued for a fictional brief. Press Run the join to see what the verifier does with each.

Every case, court and reporter in this demo is invented. "Ex. Rptr." is a fictional reporter.

The fourth row is the one that matters most. A citation with no ledger row is exactly what an invented citation looks like, and the gate does not need to know whether it was invented. It only needs to know that nobody verified it.

Notice what the demo does not do: it does not ask a model whether a citation looks right. Each result comes from the ledger and the verification record, which is why the same citation gives the same result every time.

By default a second model family works the file independently and hunts for authority the first pass missed. That is valuable, and it is also a new source of possible error. So the second model's citations are leads only: each passes the same four-part check or is quarantined. The second model's independent read adds ideas; it does not add unverified citations.

Verification is not a single moment:

• During research, each candidate case is fetched, read in full and screened before it gets a row.
• In the attack phase, the citator runs again over the final list of case citations actually relied on.
• In the verification phase, the ledger rule runs against the draft, alongside checks of every number, name, date and docket number against the primary source.
• If the final read sends the draft back, the attack and verification checks of phases 11 and 12 are voided and re-run on the new text.

When any of these fails, the draft does not move forward. See what happens when a check fails.

We commit to a process:

• Every case citation in a filing the engine prepares is a verified ledger row, and the engine blocks any that isn't.
• Every case relied on is read in full from a primary source.
• The ledger join is run by a fresh verifier, never the drafter.
• A case named without a reporter citation is flagged with a warning, never passed silently.
• Statute and rule citations are declared as outside the case-citation block and are handled on their own path.
• Every row records who verified it, when, and from what source.

What we do not promise: outcomes. No process controls how a court rules, what the facts turn out to be, or what the other side argues. A verified case citation is a real, accurately quoted, supportive and still-good authority; it is not a promise that a court will agree with the argument it supports.

How to check us:

• Ask us to follow any case citation from the draft back to its row, its source and its quotation.
• Clients can ask for the ledger row behind any case citation in their filing.

This site follows the same rule. Every legal citation on these pages was checked against its primary source before publishing.

For a supervising attorney, the ledger is a record of what was checked, by what standard, against what source. It is built to support a lawyer's duties of competence and candor; it never discharges them. The firm page covers verification and a lawyer's duties, and engineers can read how the ledger join works. Verification is one part of the full 15-phase process.

Can the engine invent a case? A model can propose a case that doesn't exist. It cannot get a case citation into a filing: the citation needs a verified ledger row, and the engine blocks any case citation that doesn't have one.

What about Id. and supra? Each short form must resolve to a full citation that has a verified row. A short form that can't be traced blocks the document.

What if a case is mentioned by name but not cited? A case mentioned by name alone, without a reporter citation, is flagged with a warning rather than blocked.

Are statutes and court rules verified the same way? No. The mechanical block covers case citations. Rule citations are checked against the official rule text the engine fetches for the court. A statute's text is required before it is relied on, and it is retrieved from the source.

Does it catch a case that was overruled recently? Every case is screened for negative treatment before use. Because the engine's database is a periodic snapshot, finding the most recent controlling statement is its own step, done as a live search.

Is this the same as asking an AI to "double-check its work"? No. A prompt can be ignored. The ledger join is a check the document must pass before it can be produced, and it is tested to prove it can fail.

Email us with questions about how a case citation is traced from research to ledger row to finished draft.

Start a request (opens the main site) How the two models work

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