Download the template policy below to ensure your firm doesn't end up on the front page for the wrong reasons.
How the largest global firms are operationalizing responsible AI with citation-checking policies
As the legal profession continues to see near-daily headlines about major law firms filing pleadings containing “AI hallucinations” (mistakes created by generative AI), law firm leadership and in-house counsel are realizing that the old ways of ensuring accuracy in legal filings are not suitable for this new AI era.
Litigation pleadings typically contain hundreds of citations to both factual and legal source documents - the norm that courts expect is that every sentence has a citation immediately following the statement the attorney claims to be true. Those citations must be formatted in a standardized way (Bluebook or other local style rules) so that the court and clerks can look up and verify the source.
All law firm litigation departments have informal (or sometimes formal) requirements that the associates and paralegals must cite-check (check over every citation in the document) before filing - this is part of an attorney's ethical duties. However, most law firms stop short of explaining to employees exactly the process and procedure that must be followed for cite-checking.
But now that pleadings are being edited with generative AI, sometimes without the knowledge or consent of the partners, the mistakes that AI introduces can be so subtle and unusual that they are hard for humans to detect during standard proofreading.
In addition, checking over citations to the facts of the case can be especially burdensome, as the sources are scattered across Relativity, the firm's case management systems, the attorneys' desktop folders, and other locations.
As a result, Clearbrief's customers have implemented operational policies requiring the use of Clearbrief's AI platform in Microsoft Word (*note - these features are not generative AI) to systematically check over every single citation in a Word document.
The policy also requires that the users document they have done this so it is auditable by the firm.
It's time for law firm operations to recognize that the “apprenticeship” model of assuming attorneys and paralegals learn norms and best practices by observing others on the team is not suitable for the AI era.
Law firm employees need clear guidance and tools that help them detect all of the ways that AI hallucinations can appear in pleadings.
Clearbrief holds 7 patents (and counting) relating to the detection of citations and other AI legal writing technology, which is why our platform is the leading AI litigation drafting platform trusted by the AmLaw 10, courts, government agencies, and in-house teams like Microsoft.
Law firm risk departments need to understand that the mistakes resulting in sanctions are not just about fake cases (read more about the recent headlines and what went wrong in each case in this blog post). Clearbrief is the only platform that automatically detects every citation in a Word document to both facts and law, gives a score to measure how well your sentence relates to the cited page, while also flagging all of the different potential errors in citation formatting and substance.
And it can perform this analysis on a filed PDF by your opponent as well.
Clearbrief also integrates with LexisNexis (if users have a subscription) and Fastcase vLex (no subscription needed) to automatically display cited sources, making it faster for the human reviewer to verify accuracy. When you're ready to file, you can create hyperlinked versions of filings with a click, so that the judge and clients can appreciate the accuracy of your work. They don't need a Clearbrief subscription to view the hyperlinked version of your pleading - check out an example here.
Download the Word doc of the sample policy here to see how the largest firms are implementing Clearbrief across their litigation departments to prevent sanctions that can cost $50K and above - as well as the firm's reputation.
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