Every citation in your filing, checked against the source.
Paste a brief or drop a file. Loupe marks every citation that doesn’t exist, points to the wrong page, or couldn’t be checked.
Check a filing
For United States filings. Free, without an account, and nothing you paste is kept.
999 F.4d 1234
Almost certainly fabricated, page 7No reporter called “F.4d” has ever been published.
Review before filing
What Loupe checks
| Cases | each exists, is the case named, and the page cited falls inside the opinion |
|---|---|
| Statutes | the section exists and has not been repealed |
| Regulations | against the current Code of Federal Regulations |
| Court rules | federal rules, and the states whose rules Loupe can read |
| The record | exhibits and transcripts supplied with the filing |
| Links | still reachable, moved, or only in an archive |
Checked to the page
A pin cite can name a real case and still point outside it. Loupe knows where about seven million opinions begin and end. Page 678 of Ashcroft v. Iqbal holds up, because the opinion runs from 662 to 700.
Schedule of fees
| Service | Fee |
|---|---|
| Checking a filingCases, statutes, rules and links. | No fee |
| One filing, with the paid checksQuotations against the opinion, the newest cases, a record to keep. | $29 |
| SoloEvery filing, history by matter. Any number of people, on one invoice. | $99 a person, monthlyor $79 billed yearly |
| FirmFor firms of five or more: an administrator, sign-in through the firm's own accounts, records kept as long as your policy requires, and a log of who checked what. | $129 a person, monthly |
| Twenty people or more, or an insurerTerms by arrangement. | Write to us |
Paid plans are not on sale yet. The free check works now. Create an account to hear when they open.
Questions
How do I check whether a case citation is real?
Paste the filing into Loupe at loupe.legal. Every citation is looked up against published case law and the report says whether the case exists and whether it is the case the document names. This is free and needs no account. The harder failure is a citation that is real but carries a different case than the one named, which a lookup that only asks 'does this page exist' reports as fine.
How do I find AI-hallucinated citations in a brief?
Fabricated authority takes several shapes and they are not equally easy to catch: a reporter that has never been published, a real page carrying a different case, a pin cite past the end of the opinion, a quotation that is not in the text, and a case cited for the opposite of what it held. Loupe checks the first four and says plainly when it cannot check something, rather than reporting it as clean.
Is there a free citation checker for lawyers?
Loupe is free without an account for every check its own data can answer, which includes whether each case exists, whether it is the case you named, whether the pin cite falls inside the opinion, and whether statutes, regulations and court rules are real. Its accuracy figures are published together with the document sets they were measured on.
What happens if a lawyer cites a fake case?
Courts sanction it, and the sanctions are rising. In Couvrette v. Wisnovsky a federal court in Oregon ordered two lawyers to pay a combined $110,204, most of it the other side's legal fees, over briefs citing 15 cases that do not exist and 8 invented quotations. In April 2026 the Nebraska Supreme Court suspended an Omaha attorney, until further order, after 57 of 63 citations in a brief proved defective. A growing number of federal judges require lawyers to certify that the citations in a filing were checked.
How do I comply with a judge's standing order on AI-assisted filings?
Those orders require counsel to certify that every citation was independently verified. The certification is a document you file, and it should rest on evidence that the check happened. Loupe produces a report naming every authority, the source each was checked against, and which checks did not run, sealed so it can be verified without trusting the tool that made it.
Can a citation checker verify Westlaw or Lexis citations?
No free tool can. A citation like 2023 WL 1234567 exists only inside a paid database, so nothing without that licence can say whether it is real. Loupe reports such citations as uncheckable and never as false, and points to the rule that already requires counsel to file a copy of an unpublished opinion they rely on.