Legal Citation Validation
Know why your citations fail
Existing tools tell you a citation is wrong. TrustCitation tells you exactly how — wrong holding, wrong jurisdiction, non-binding authority, or fabricated entirely.
Get Early AccessPass/fail isn't enough
AI-generated legal briefs hallucinate citations at alarming rates. Studies show 17-33% of citations in AI-assisted filings are problematic — even with retrieval-augmented tools.
Current citation checkers give you a binary answer: PASS or FAIL. But a citation can fail in five fundamentally different ways — and each one requires a different fix.
The case doesn't exist at all
Schwartz v. Avianca — entirely invented by ChatGPT
Case exists, but doesn't say what's claimed
Real case cited for a holding it never made
Persuasive authority cited as binding
9th Circuit case applied in 2nd Circuit brief
Case exists but key details are wrong
Wrong year, wrong court, wrong parties
Case isn't in any public database
Unreported decision or restricted access source
Diagnosis, not just detection
TrustCitation runs every citation through a multi-layer validation pipeline and returns a diagnostic report — not a traffic light.
Existence Check
Cross-reference against public court databases. Does this case actually exist?
Semantic Match
Read the opinion text. Does it actually say what your brief claims it says?
Authority Check
Is this binding or persuasive? Right jurisdiction? Right court level?
What a diagnostic report looks like
Every citation gets a confidence score, failure category, and plain-English explanation.
Citation Report — Sample Brief
3 citations analyzed
Schwartz v. Avianca, No. 22-cv-1461 (S.D.N.Y. 2023)
This case does not exist in any public court database. The docket number, parties, and court are entirely fabricated. This is a known AI hallucination — cited in Mata v. Avianca as a cautionary example.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)
Case exists and is correctly cited. However, the brief claims this case established a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. Terry v. Ohio actually established the “reasonable suspicion” standard for stop-and-frisk. The claimed holding is misattributed.
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
Citation verified. Case exists, holding matches claimed proposition, binding authority in this jurisdiction.
Built on peer-reviewed research
TrustCitation's validation methodology is grounded in published epistemological research on AI knowledge verification — not just pattern matching.
Read the research paper →Get Early Access
We're opening TrustCitation to a small group of lawyers first.