A fabricated citation is not a formatting error; it is a Rule 11 problem waiting for a show-cause order. Certification moves the catch to before your signature, and it produces something a flag never does: a durable, independently checkable record of exactly what was verified.
What does citation certification check?
Every authority in your filing is resolved on three dimensions. Existence: the citation is matched exactly against live case-law, so a fabricated case is flagged before you sign — the primary anti-hallucination signal. Quotation accuracy: quoted passages are matched against the published opinion, catching misquotes and invented quotations. Good-law standing: overruled or superseded authority is flagged, sourced from your firm’s citator (KeyCite or Shepard’s) — we never guess good law.
A citation passes only when all three hold. The result is not a flag on a dashboard — it is a certificate: a signed, independently verifiable record of exactly what was checked and when.
Why is a certificate different from a flag?
Most citation tools flag suspected problems and produce nothing durable. When a judge’s standing order asks what you did to verify your authorities, “our tool flagged nothing” is an assertion. A certificate is evidence: each result is signed with post-quantum cryptography and sealed to an RFC 6962 transparency log, so a court, opposing counsel, or your insurer can confirm the checks ran — without trusting us or you.
What it does not do
- It does not promise an AI that never hallucinates — it certifies which of your citations are real, accurately quoted, and good law.
- Its resolution is only as complete as the case-law corpus it can reach; coverage is recorded with every result, never hidden.
- It certifies process and results, not whether your legal argument is correct.
