Legal Research Assistant with Citation Checking
A research assistant that answers only from retrieved judgments and statutes, quotes the passage it relies on, and checks each citation for existence, accuracy and later treatment.
- Capability:
- Document Intelligence
- Industry:
- Legal
Who it is for
- Litigation Associate
- Knowledge Management Lawyer
- In-House Counsel
- Law Firm Partner
The problem
General-purpose chatbots produce fluent legal answers with citations that may not exist, misquote a judgment or ignore that it was later overruled. Courts in several jurisdictions have criticised filings that relied on such citations. Lawyers still need faster research, but only in a form they can verify before it goes into an opinion or a written submission.
Fabricated or garbled citations
Party names, years, reporters and paragraph numbers can be invented or mixed up by unconstrained models.
Good law or not
A judgment may have been overruled, distinguished or referred to a larger bench, and research notes rarely say so.
New criminal laws
References to the IPC, CrPC and Evidence Act now need mapping to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, BNSS and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, in force since July 2024.
Drafts from many hands
Written submissions combine research from associates, interns and outside tools, and nobody checks every citation end to end.
What we build
We build a research assistant that retrieves from sources you are licensed to use and from your firm's own opinions and briefs, and answers only with propositions it can support from retrieved text. Each proposition carries its citation and the quoted paragraph. A separate citation checker then verifies that each case exists in the source, that the citation and paragraph number match, and that quoted text appears verbatim, and it flags available signals of later treatment and bench strength for the lawyer to check. The same checker runs on any draft, so citations from any source are verified before filing.
- Retrieval over licensed case-law databases and your internal knowledge bank
- Answers built only from retrieved passages, with a quoted paragraph for each proposition
- Citation existence, format and paragraph checks across law reports and neutral citations
- Verbatim quote verification against the judgment text
- Flags signals of later treatment and bench strength for lawyer review
- Draft checker that verifies every citation in a brief, opinion or written submission
How it works
- 01Pose the questionThe lawyer enters a research question with jurisdiction, forum and any key facts, or uploads a draft to check.
- 02Retrieve sourcesRelevant judgments, statutes and internal opinions are retrieved from licensed and internal sources.
- 03Draft a grounded answerA draft answer is built only from retrieved passages, each proposition with its citation and quote.
- 04Verify citationsEach citation is checked for existence, accuracy, quote match and treatment signals.
- 05Handle failuresCitations that fail any check are removed or clearly marked, never left silently in the answer.
- 06Lawyer reviewThe lawyer reads the cited paragraphs, checks treatment and decides what to rely on.
Architecture
- Sources
- Licensed case-law databases, accessed within licence terms
- Bare acts, rules and notifications
- Internal opinions, briefs and research notes
- Retrieval
- Legal search with jurisdiction and court filters
- Passage ranking
- Old-to-new criminal law mapping table
- Drafting
- Grounded answer generator restricted to retrieved passages
- Proposition and quote linker
- Verification
- Citation existence and format checker
- Verbatim quote matcher
- Treatment and bench-strength signal lookup
- Review and knowledge
- Lawyer review view with source paragraphs
- Approved research notes in the knowledge bank
- Usage and correction log
Inputs and outputs
Inputs
- Research questions with jurisdiction and forum
- Access to licensed case-law databases
- Bare acts, rules and notifications
- Internal opinions, briefs and research notes
- Draft briefs or submissions for citation checking
Outputs
- Grounded research answers with quoted paragraphs
- Citation verification report for each answer or draft
- List of removed or unverified citations
- Treatment and bench-strength flags for lawyer review
- Approved research notes in the knowledge bank
Where people stay in control
Lawyers read the cited paragraphs and decide what to rely on; the assistant never presents an answer as advice. Treatment signals are prompts to check, and the lawyer confirms whether a judgment is still good law.
Integrations
- Licensed legal research databases (via API or permitted access)
- Document management system and knowledge bank
- Microsoft Word add-in for draft checking
- Single sign-on and matter permissions
- Internal search portal
Guardrails
- No citation appears in an answer unless the judgment was retrieved from a source
- Every quote verified verbatim against the judgment text
- Unverified citations removed or visibly marked, never silently kept
- Answers labelled as a research aid, not legal advice
- Use of licensed content stays within licence terms
Compliance notes
- Research queries can reveal client matters, so queries and logs stay within your environment under access control.
- Use of licensed databases follows each publisher's licence terms.
A typical pilot
Duration: 4 weeks
One practice area, such as arbitration or cheque dishonour matters, with the draft checker run on recent submissions and the assistant used on live research questions.
Deliverables
- 01Source connections and retrieval tuned for the practice area
- 02Research assistant and citation checker
- 03Word add-in or upload checker for drafts
- 04Verification report on recent drafts
- 05Roll-out plan and cost estimate
What we measure
- Citation verification accuracy
- Checker results compared with manual verification by associates on a sample.
- Unsupported propositions
- Propositions whose quoted paragraph did not support the statement, from lawyer review.
- Errors caught in drafts
- Incorrect citations, misquotes or unchecked treatment found by the checker in recent drafts.
- Research time
- Lawyer-reported time on comparable questions with and without the assistant.
FAQs
01How is this different from a general chatbot?
It answers only from judgments and statutes it has actually retrieved, quotes the paragraph it relies on and runs a separate check on every citation. If a citation cannot be verified, it is removed or marked rather than presented as fact.
02Can it tell us whether a case is still good law?
It flags signals of later treatment and bench strength from the sources available. The lawyer must check those signals and confirm the position before relying on the judgment.
03Does it handle the new criminal laws?
Yes. It maps IPC, CrPC and Evidence Act references to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, BNSS and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam where a mapping exists, and flags where provisions differ.
04Can it check drafts prepared outside the tool?
Yes. Upload a draft or use the Word add-in, and every citation and quotation is checked against the sources, whoever or whatever produced it.
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Founded by Akhilesh Mittal. 8 years building a security platform for a New Zealand company. IIT ISM Dhanbad and IMT Ghaziabad. Builds production agentic AI.
Bring one matter type or one contract stack
Pick a workflow that hurts, such as NDA review, cause list tracking or a diligence index. We will run a short pilot on de-identified or consented documents and go through the output with your lawyers line by line.