Since its release, the development of generative artificial intelligence has increased exponentially. Despite its rapid growth, however, many lawyers are hesitant to add AI tools to their firm’s IT stack. One of the top reasons for this reticence is a lack of confidence in the reliability of AI responses.
According to the 8am 2026 Legal Industry Report, 84% of legal professionals surveyed reported that reduced trust in the results had a significant or moderate impact on their firm’s AI adoption.
This reluctance to embrace AI is not unfounded, especially when it comes to legal research. According to a website managed by Damien Charlotin that tracks AI hallucinations in court submissions, there have been over 1,600 reported incidents, and the number is only increasing. As explained on the website’s FAQ page, before 2025, AI hallucinations in legal briefs occurred two or three times per month but now appear a few times daily.
This explosion in the number of fake case citations has caused significant frustration for judges trying to move cases through their dockets. Most recently, in Landberg v. City of New York, Justice Valerie Brathwaite Nelson of the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division chastised not only the offending attorney but also his opponent.
She explained that the respondent’s lawyer’s failure to advise the court of the incorrect citations was equally problematic because all appellate attorneys have a responsibility to “notify the court when these types of misrepresentations and fictitious cases and fictitious citations and misrepresenting the holding of a court of appeals case.” She also chastised the respondent’s lawyer, saying: “if you read the brief and looked at the cases, you would have realized it was your responsibility also to alert the court.”
The extent of this problem has led to the development of an entirely new category of software designed to confirm the validity of AI-generated case citations. An increasing number of these tools, AI cite-checking products, have been released over the past year, either as stand-alone apps or as new features in established products. If you’re using AI-powered legal research and drafting tools, you may want to consider adding this functionality to your firm’s workflow.
Choosing AI citation check tools
Before investing in AI citation check tools, make sure you understand how they will be used in your firm, by whom and how often. As you’ll see when researching your options, costs can sometimes add up quickly, thus adding to the price your firm already pays for AI legal research and brief drafting products.
For that reason, before continuing to invest in any of these types of products, you should perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the time saved using AI-powered legal research, drafting and case citation check tools outweighs their expense. It’s entirely possible that you may find that conducting legal research using traditional legal research platforms and drafting documents the “old-fashioned” way may ultimately be more cost-effective.
If you decide to stay the course and add a citation check tool to your firm’s tech stack, you’ll need to ensure that you carefully vet both the services provided and the technology provider. This type of AI software is cloud-based, meaning your firm’s data will be stored on third-party servers. The ethical obligation of technology competence requires you to inquire about where the data will be stored, who will have access to it, how frequently it will be backed up, and the steps that will be taken to protect the data.
Additionally, because these tools are often powered by AI, you may also need to understand accuracy metrics, how client and firm data is protected, and whether any information entered into the system will be used for AI model training. You’ll also want to determine which caselaw databases the tools rely on for citation verification purposes.
With that in mind, let’s review some of the options available. The list below isn’t comprehensive, and popular legal research tools also offer ways to conduct AI case citation checks. However, for our purposes, we’ll focus on stand-alone tools or functionality integrated into document drafting systems. Pricing will be included if available on the company’s website.
AI tools integrated into document drafting platforms
First are the citation checking tools built directly into existing legal document ecosystems or writing-improvement suites, allowing lawyers to verify caselaw without leaving their core drafting workflow.
Clearbrief, an AI-powered litigation drafting platform that operates as a Microsoft Word add-in, includes the Clearbrief Cite Check Report as part of the standard subscription. This feature uses traditional AI to evaluate a document’s record and case citations to flag potential inaccuracies or AI-generated hallucinations.
Another brief drafting platform, Benchly, also offers a citation checker, Beyond Assure, which is included in the core ezBriefs subscription plan. This feature relies on rules-based logic to check documents for hallucinated citations, formatting mistakes and contextual mismatches, delivering auditable results and a sentiment score to ensure a cited case actually aligns with the associated text.
BriefCatch RealityCheck is available as part of the standard Solo subscription plan within the BriefCatch Next platform, an AI-powered legal editing and writing assistant and Microsoft Word add-in. It pairs deterministic database verification with targeted AI analysis to identify fabricated citations, misquoted language, inaccurate holdings and subtle mischaracterizations of valid precedent.
Stand-alone AI citation verification tools
Next are the stand-alone tools, which function as dedicated, independent applications that process uploaded documents or text snippets to screen them for fabricated legal authority.
CaseRead is a tool that allows users to paste up to 50,000 characters of legal text, which it screens to locate false hallucinated case citations. CaseRead is currently available for free.
Another option is LawDroid CiteCheck AI. This verification tool extracts citations from uploaded Word or PDF files. It cross-references extracted data with public databases, such as CourtListener, and generates a color-coded report that clearly highlights valid and invalid cases. You can upload up to five documents at no cost.
Next, BrentWorks CiteSentinel is a stand-alone web application that focuses strictly on confirming the validity of caselaw cited in a brief. Pricing starts at $19.99 per document, with monthly plans available.
GroundTruth, which offers a stand-alone tool in addition to a Microsoft Word add-in, establishes a factual baseline for digital references by cross-referencing the legal text provided against verified public records and primary court documents. It is currently free to use; no credit card is required.
Necessary insurance policy
As you can see, there’s no shortage of ways to confirm the accuracy of citations included in AI-generated legal documents.
Ultimately, taking the time to carefully select and implement the right verification tool is a necessary insurance policy for protecting your firm’s reputation, satisfying your ethical obligations, and ensuring your submissions always stand up to judicial scrutiny.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York-based attorney, author and journalist. She is the principal legal insight strategist at 8am, parent company of LawPay, MyCase, CasePeer and DocketWise. She is the nationally recognized author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers and is a co-author of Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, both published by the American Bar Association. She writes regular columns for ABAJournal.com and Above the Law, has authored hundreds of articles for other publications, and she regularly speaks at conferences regarding the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Follow her on LinkedIn, or she can be reached at [email protected].
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