Citation Verification

CiteStrike's Citation Verification provides real-time verification against legal databases with semantic quote matching to ensure citation accuracy and authenticity. Our comprehensive system catches hallucinated citations before they reach the court.

Comprehensive Citation Analysis

Legal Citation Types

Federal Cases:

  • Supreme Court decisions
  • Circuit Court of Appeals
  • Federal District Courts
  • Bankruptcy Courts
  • Tax Court decisions

State & Other Sources:

  • State Supreme Courts
  • State Appellate Courts
  • Administrative agencies
  • Legal treatises and journals
  • Statutory citations

Citation Format Recognition

Our algorithms recognize and validate citations in multiple standard formats:

Bluebook Format:
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
ALWD Format:
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
State Variations:
People v. Simpson, 32 Cal. 4th 1064 (2004)
Statutory Citations:
42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2018)

Multi-Stage Verification Process

Stage 1: Citation Extraction

Advanced pattern recognition identifies and extracts all legal citations from the document, filtering out false positives like page numbers and section references.

Smart Filtering:

  • • Excludes page numbers (e.g., "page 42" vs "42 U.S. 123")
  • • Identifies incomplete citations for manual review
  • • Recognizes various citation formats and abbreviations
  • • Handles parallel citations and cross-references

Stage 2: Database Verification

Each extracted citation is verified against authoritative legal databases to confirm existence and accuracy of case names, citations, and court information.

Valid Citations:

  • • Case exists in official records
  • • Citation format is correct
  • • Court and date information verified
  • • Direct link to source provided

Invalid Citations:

  • • Case does not exist
  • • Incorrect citation format
  • • Wrong court or date information
  • • Fabricated or hallucinated citation

Stage 3: Quote Verification

Semantic analysis verifies that quoted text accurately reflects the original source material, detecting paraphrasing, misquotation, and context manipulation.

Similarity Scoring:

≥ 90%
Exact Match
70-89%
Acceptable
< 70%
Invalid

Citation Scoring & Analysis

Citation Performance Metrics

Citation Accuracy:

Total Citations Found: Exact count
Valid Citations: Verified count
Invalid Citations: Error count
Citation Score: Percentage accuracy

Quote Verification:

Total Quotes Found: Exact count
Accurate Quotes: Verified count
Questionable Quotes: Low similarity
Quote Score: Average similarity

Semantic Analysis

Advanced natural language processing ensures quotes maintain original meaning and context, detecting subtle alterations that change legal significance.

Context Preservation

Verifies quotes maintain original legal context

Meaning Integrity

Ensures no meaning distortion or misrepresentation

Legal Precision

Maintains exact legal language and terminology

Common Citation Issues Detected

Hallucinated Citations

Completely fabricated case names, citations, or court decisions that do not exist in any legal database.

Incorrect Citation Format

Valid cases cited with wrong volume numbers, page numbers, or court information.

Misquoted Text

Quotes that alter original meaning, context, or legal significance through paraphrasing or selective editing.

Context Manipulation

Accurate quotes used in contexts that misrepresent the original court's reasoning or holding.

Your Professional Protection

Avoid Sanctions:

  • • Prevent submission of fabricated citations
  • • Ensure accuracy of all quoted material
  • • Maintain proper citation formatting
  • • Verify case law before filing

Maintain Credibility:

  • • Build trust with accurate legal research
  • • Demonstrate thorough case verification
  • • Protect professional reputation
  • • Ensure client confidence in legal work

Electronic Data Collection Notice

In compliance with California Privacy Rights, we collect and process electronic data including document uploads, verification results, and usage analytics to provide our legal verification services. Learn more