The verification workflow

Why this matters

An AI tool can name a case that does not exist or describe a real case wrongly. Courts have sanctioned people for filing fake cites, and you are responsible for every cite in a paper you sign. This chapter gives you a routine that catches most of those errors before anyone else sees them. Do it for every case, every time.

This is general information, not legal advice.

The routine at a glance

1. Read the full text.
2. Pull the exact quote with its page.
3. State the holding in your own words.
4. Check treatment.
5. Save a copy and add a manifest row.
6. Log it.
7. Search the saved file for your quote.
8. Run a cite audit on the draft before filing.
9. For cases your argument depends on, get a blind second read.
10. Record any hallucination you catch.

Step 1. Read the full text

Open the actual opinion from a source you trust (Chapter 2 lists them). Read all of it, not only the part an AI tool pointed you to. You need to know what the court decided, what it left open, and what the facts were. A case seen only inside another opinion, an article, or an AI answer is "real but not read." Do not mark it verified.

If one source lacks the case, work down the source ladder in Chapter 5, and search by party name with no date filter.

Step 2. Pull the exact quote with its page

Copy the passage you want to use, word for word, and note the page where it appears. If the text you have has no page numbers, say so in your log and look for a paginated copy before you use a pinpoint cite in a filing. A quote you have not matched to the source is a guess.

Step 3. State the holding in your own words

Write one or two sentences saying what the court decided and why. Then ask whether your sentence in the draft matches. The most common way a real cite goes bad is that it is cited for something the court did not hold. Watch for dicta (comments that were not needed for the result), for a dissent mistaken for the majority, and for a different legal standard than yours.

Step 4. Check treatment

Treatment means what later courts did with the case. Free tools do not give you a ready-made flag, so use this four-step routine.

1. Direct history. Was this decision reversed or vacated on appeal in the same case? Check the higher court and, for federal cases, the docket.
2. Negative-treatment scan. Search opinions that cite your case for words such as overruled, abrogated, superseded, and declined to follow. Read every hit. Words such as "distinguished" often refer to a different point.
3. Doctrinal foundation. Ask what the case rests on. If that foundation (a statute since amended, a deference rule, an earlier case that was overruled) has changed, look for courts applying the new authority against your case. Keyword searches miss this.
4. Recency. Read the three to five newest opinions that cite your case, from courts that bind you. Confirm they still apply the point you need.

Google Scholar's "Cited by" and CourtListener's citing-case tools help with steps 2 and 4. Neither one labels a case as good or bad law, and "Cited by" includes articles.

Record one verdict with the date.

Step 5. Save a copy and add a manifest row

Save the text of every case you verify in Case Law/verified/, with a file name that tells you what it is, such as Smith_v_Jones_123F4d456_2dCir2021_courtlistener.txt. Add a row to _MANIFEST.md in that folder. Chapter 3 lists the columns, and the download manifest template has them ready to copy. A case is not done until it is saved and listed.

Step 6. Log it

Add the case to your citation log with the pages you checked, what it supports, the source, the verdict, and the date. Cases not on the verified list do not get cited. Cases on the do-not-cite list stay out. The citation log template shows the layout. Record verdicts with a date, because treatment changes.

Step 7. Search the saved file for your quote

Open the saved file and search for the exact words you quote. If the search finds nothing, your quote is wrong, from a different case, or paraphrased. Fix the draft. This takes seconds and catches many errors.

Step 8. Run a cite audit before filing

A cite audit is a mechanical check of the whole draft. You do not need to write code yourself. Ask Claude Code to build a small command-line tool with these behaviors.

• It reads your draft file.
• It sends the text, in chunks that fit the service limit, to CourtListener's citation lookup.
• It prints each cite as found, not in CourtListener, or not recognized.
• It exits with an error if any cite is missed, so you can treat it as a gate.
• It reads your CourtListener token from an environment variable or a file outside your project, never from the code.

Remember what the tool can and cannot tell you. A miss means "look closer." It does not prove the case is fake, because a valid cite can be absent from the database. A hit means the cite exists. It does not show that the case says what you wrote, and it does not cover statutes. The free account has daily request limits (see Chapter 2), so run the audit on the final draft, not on every edit. Test the tool once by planting a fake cite and confirming it is caught.

Then check statutes and rules by hand against the official text. Open each one and read the current version.

Step 9. Get a blind second read for key cases

If an argument depends on a case, have a second reader state the holding without seeing your summary. If the two readings differ, believe neither until you reread the opinion yourself. Do not average them. Chapter 7 shows how to set this up.

Step 10. Keep a hallucination log

When you catch a fake cite, a wrong quote, or a wrong holding, write it down. Note the date, the bad cite, what was wrong, and how you caught it. Put the bad cite on your do-not-cite list so it cannot return in a later session. The model forgets. The file does not.

What free tools cannot do

Free tools are not a full citator. The routine above catches most red flags and not all. Paid citators such as KeyCite and Shepard's are built for treatment checks, and public law libraries sometimes offer them on site. Bar association database benefits are usually for lawyers only (Chapter 2). If you rely on a case heavily and cannot get a real citator, write that down in your log, cite the case narrowly, and consider asking a lawyer or a law librarian to check it.

Next: Chapter 7, using more than one model.

Sources

• CourtListener citation lookup API
• CourtListener API overview
• CourtListener
• Google Scholar help