Legal Tech
AI Cite Check
Definition
AI cite check is an automated system that checks legal citations in a document against authoritative sources. It checks whether cited cases can be matched to real authorities, whether quoted language matches the source, and whether holdings appear accurately represented, and it flags authorities with negative treatment such as being overruled or reversed. Its output is a set of flags for attorney review, not a substitute for that review.
Citation accuracy is a fundamental requirement of legal practice. Courts rely on cited authorities to evaluate legal arguments, and inaccurate citations undermine a lawyer's credibility and can result in sanctions. Traditional cite checking is a manual, labor-intensive process: lawyers or legal assistants must look up each citation, verify the quoted language, confirm the holding, and check the case's subsequent history.
AI cite checking accelerates this process by checking each citation in a document against authoritative sources. The system checks whether the cited case or statute can be found, whether any quoted language matches the source, whether the proposition attributed to the authority appears supported, and whether the authority shows negative treatment. Each citation receives a confidence score and any issues are flagged for attorney review.
The importance of AI cite checking has increased dramatically with the adoption of AI drafting and research tools. Because language models can hallucinate citations, any document that has been touched by AI requires particularly rigorous citation verification. AI cite checking provides a systematic way to surface these problems for attorney review before a document reaches a client, opposing counsel, or the court. It supports the lawyer's independent verification duty; it does not discharge it.
How Irys approaches this
Cite Check identifies legal citations in submitted documents and checks them against available legal-source data, including citation details and available treatment information. Results are provided for attorney review.
Related terms
Research
Citation Verification
Citation verification is the process of independently confirming that the legal citations in a document hold up: that the cited authorities exist, that quoted language matches the source, and that the authorities have not been overruled or negatively treated. In AI-assisted legal work it is the step that catches hallucinated or inaccurate references, and it supports the reviewing attorney's own verification duty rather than replacing it.
Research
Good Law Check
A good law check is the process of verifying whether a cited legal authority remains valid and has not been overruled, reversed, superseded by statute, or otherwise undermined by subsequent legal developments. AI-powered good law checks automate the citator function traditionally performed by Shepard's Citations (Lexis) or KeyCite (Westlaw).
Research
AI Legal Citations
AI legal citations are case references, statutory citations, and other legal authority references generated by AI systems in the course of legal research or drafting. The accuracy and verifiability of AI-generated citations is a central concern in legal AI because language models can produce citations that appear well-formed but reference non-existent authorities.
AI Concepts
AI Hallucination in Legal
An AI hallucination occurs when a language model generates text that appears authoritative but is factually incorrect, such as fabricating case citations, inventing statutes, or misrepresenting holdings. In legal practice, hallucinations carry professional responsibility implications because lawyers have a duty to verify the accuracy of every authority they cite.
Continue exploring
See AI Cite Check in action
Irys One brings research, drafting, and document intelligence together in one platform. Try it free for 7 days.