The check before the signature.

Before a filing is signed, somebody opens every authority it cites and looks. This is what to look for, in what order, and where the published record answers each question.

The page after the comma is the part of a citation most often wrong and the part most checkers skip, because checking it needs the opinion’s last page, which the public record did not use to carry.

A quotation is the strongest claim a brief makes about an authority: not that it holds this, but that it says this, in these words. The check is to find them.

A fabricated citation has the shape of a real one, and the reporters are dense enough that an invented volume and page usually lands on a real opinion, just not the one named. So the citation’s existing proves nothing; the record has to be read.

Five states answered the fabricated-citation problem in their rules of procedure this year, and the answer is the same in each: the signature carries the verification. Here is what each one says, in its own words.

Every reason to check your own citations is a reason to check the other side’s: their fabricated case is your motion, and their misquotation is your reply.

The court rules and standing orders on AI in filings, each quoted from the court’s own document.

Measured on named documents and re-run with every release.

Free, without an account.