The Litigator FAQ on Gen AI and Cite-Checking
This month I want to answer the questions we hear most often from litigators trying to stay on top of how Gen AI is changing the way they write and check their work. Do you know the answers to all of these?
Why did catching citation typos suddenly become so important in 2026?
Rightly or wrongly, more litigators now treat a citation typo as a sign that opposing counsel used Gen AI. That has given rise to costly motion practice, where the parties fight over how bad (or how innocent) the typo really was.
- In Scott v. Walmart, plaintiff’s counsel accused Walmart’s counsel, Davis Wright Tremaine and Milbank, of using AI over a single-digit typo. The court ultimately called it a “specious attempt to cast aspersions,” but this summer defense counsel still had to brief the issue and submit an affirmation that AI wasn’t the cause of the error.
- A few weeks ago in Nantongo v. Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, a lawyer put the wrong reporter volume in two citations, and plaintiff’s counsel moved to sanction him for AI hallucinations. The court denied the motion, but only after both sides briefed it.
Whether AI or human error caused the mistake is beside the point these days. That’s why firms require running the filing through Clearbrief to catch these errors and avoid costly, embarrassing motion practice.
Get a demo of Clearbrief and explore a pilot
Why does my firm use Clearbrief for cite-checking when I could ask Claude, ChatGPT, or another Gen AI tool for a summary of potential issues?
Here are three reasons it isn’t prudent to rely on Gen AI to check citations:
- Gen AI models can be very insightful at suggesting improvements to the ideas in your writing. However, the latest academic research shows they achieve only 22-51% accuracy on rule-based citation and Bluebooking issues. Gen AI is also notorious for making unexpected changes to citations when attorneys ask it to check them. OpenAI’s own research explains that large language models will never completely eliminate hallucinations, even as they get smarter, because of how the models function and how they’re trained.
- When an AI model gives you a summary of issues, you have no idea what was left out of the analysis or what mistakes the AI might have overlooked. Cite-checking requires systematic review, not a summary.
- Even if Gen AI were reliable at this task, you have a regulatory requirement to personally lay eyes on all cited sources. Case after sanctions case notes that attorneys have a duty to review every cited source with their own eyes before signing their name to a pleading. California has a new law on this (more below).
Clearbrief’s rules-based (deterministic) Analyzer in Word automatically displays the cited sources, both cases and factual evidence, side by side with your writing, while drawing your attention to issues human eyes can easily miss.
Does using a legal Gen AI tool for drafting, like Harvey, Legora, or Claude, mean I can skip cite-checking the draft with Clearbrief?
No. As one recent example, in Hill v. Found. Media LLC, No. 25-cv-5947 (AS), ECF No. 57 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2026), a firm disclosed that it had used Harvey’s tools in preparing a filing that cited a nonexistent case.
These tools are built for creating the draft, not for the systematic cite-checking process litigators must perform.
Why is Clearbrief asking me to click through each of the 181+ citations in my brief one by one? And how does this relate to the new California law on cite-checking?
Clearbrief is trying to save your reputation. It gives you a fast way to click through each citation in your Word doc and spot mistakes in cites to both facts AND law. That matters, because there are dozens and dozens of sanctions cases in 2026 alone involving fake fact cites.
The Flags analysis will suggest potential fixes (watch a short video of how this works), but that’s not the only point of running it.
When you cite-check with Clearbrief, it creates an audit trail showing you satisfied the new California law, which requires every person signing the brief to certify that they laid eyes on the cited sources.
And a reminder: according to a recent California opinion, partners simply cannot discharge this obligation by saying someone else at the firm checked it.
Do I personally need to link up all my citations? Or can a paralegal or associate I work with do it?
Most of our Biglaw customers rely on paralegals or an associate to create the Clearbrief matter folder, upload the sources, and run “Smart Linking.” They then share the matter with the other litigators so they can satisfy their review requirements once the cites have been linked. The bonus is that the draft is then hyperlinked for the court as well.
And the firm now has a record that everyone did their cite-check.
Have a colleague who needs to get trained up? Ask them to email hello@clearbrief.ai.
Get a 15-minute personal walkthrough on checking your cites with Clearbrief
Dissect opposing counsel’s brief with new Smart Linking, improved Flags, and global Add Fact Cite
If you haven’t tried dissecting opposing counsel’s brief with Clearbrief recently, here’s a quick guide to the newest tools.
Step 1: Create a matter folder in Clearbrief and upload the factual record opposing counsel referenced, like their exhibits, the discovery, and other facts.
Step 2: Use “Convert a PDF to Word and Analyze” to convert opposing counsel’s brief into a Word doc so Clearbrief’s Analyzer can work its magic. (We’re better than Adobe at preserving formatting, especially with recent improvements to the conversion process!)
This process runs our brand-new Smart Linking tools, so all the cited facts get connected to the uploaded evidence with much less effort.
Step 3: Turn on tracked changes and go through Clearbrief’s Red Flags analysis to spot any hallucinated cases, or even formatting errors that indicate careless use of Gen AI. Then use Add Fact Cite on the sentences in their facts section to easily find the evidence they decided not to include.
Timelines: more tailored output on the first try
One of our most popular tools now has a new step-by-step process, so you get the timeline you need on the first try.
Before you generate, select your desired output: just the key events, or every dated event in the record. Behind the scenes, we’ve streamlined how timelines are generated, so event descriptions are tighter and easier to review, with less editing before they go into your facts section. Check out this video .
Expanded support for public domain-style citations
Clearbrief now has improved support for public domain (“neutral”) case citations, including Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana cites, and formats them as expected when building your instant Table of Authorities.
Fewer, more nuanced Flags to save your attention span
We’ve improved quote mismatch and data mismatch detection, so the flags you review are worth your time, with clearer descriptions of why a citation is being flagged for review.
Even more types of cites detected and displayed automatically
We continue to expand the types of citations Clearbrief can detect and link automatically, without needing your manual input, including:
- Variations on Westlaw citations: Clearbrief now finds the source in Lexis for more of your Westlaw cites, so fewer need hunting down yourself
- Variations on paragraph cites
- Exhibits, however you label them
- California Rules of Court, all titles: every title now links automatically, with no manual lookup
- Ambiguous cites to state rules of evidence: Clearbrief is smarter at picking up context clues to detect and display these cites
Smart Exhibits: originals and translations, now kept together
Keep every original and its translation paired without matching them by hand. When you upload documents that look like language versions of the same file, Clearbrief now prompts you to link each translation to its original and confirm its language. And when you build an Exhibit Index, you choose whether each translation gets its own row or shares a row with its original, so the index matches the format your filing requires.
Clearbrief now classifies each document type inside a compiled PDF
When one PDF combines depositions, exhibits, emails, and affidavits, Clearbrief now shows where each document starts and ends, so you can jump straight to the one you need. It also classifies each document’s type, which helps when you use other tools like Add Fact Cite and Timeline.
Want a document labeled differently? Change it in place with the new document classification editor.
Procedural History, now as a bulleted list option
Your hyperlinked Procedural History can now come as a bulleted list, so you can easily delete the events you don’t care about and get the most targeted draft. The latest version has the seal of approval from our arbitrator and judicial users, who use it themselves!
How to be ready if your work is ever questioned
The Sixth Circuit recently required an attorney whose briefs cited the wrong cases and included quotations that “do not exist” to explain:
- Who wrote the briefing in each case
- Whether any of the briefs were ghostwritten, in whole or in part
- Whether Generative AI was used in drafting the briefs
- The processes used to cite-check each brief
No one ever wants to be in the position of explaining this to the court, but Clearbrief is here to give you the backup you need to prove your diligence and save your reputation. Running the Analyzer creates an audit trail you can use to defend yourself, along with our Cite Check Report.
If you haven’t tried Clearbrief in a while, you’ll be excited to see all the updates we’ve made to make it easier than ever to use.
Get a demo of Clearbrief and explore a pilot
Try it now: get Clearbrief from the Microsoft AppSource store.
