How to Cite-Check a Brief Before You File
· LawDiver
A practical workflow for cite-checking legal work: confirm each case exists, supports the proposition, and remains usable — plus where to cite-check a brief for free with CiteDiver.
How to Cite-Check a Brief Before You File
Cite-checking a brief is not optional polish. It is the last control that keeps a fabricated, miscited, or overruled authority from leaving your office — especially when AI-assisted drafting is in the mix. Courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing citations to cases that do not exist. The remedy is not another chat prompt. It is a methodical pass against real authority.
This guide covers how to cite-check a brief end to end, and where to cite-check a brief if you do not have Westlaw or Lexis open for every draft.
What “cite-check” actually means
A complete cite check answers four questions for every case citation:
- Does the opinion exist? Does the reporter cite (or neutral cite) resolve to a real decision?
- Is the citation accurate? Do the parties, court, year, and reporter line up with the opinion you meant?
- Does the opinion support the proposition? Does the page or holding you cite actually say what your sentence claims?
- Is the authority still usable? Has it been overruled, vacated, reversed on the point, or sharply limited?
Existence checks catch hallucinations fast. Proposition and good-law checks catch the subtler failures — the real case cited for the wrong rule, or the real case that no longer stands for what you need.
Step-by-step: how to cite-check a brief
1. Freeze the draft
Work from the version you intend to file. Cite-checking a moving draft wastes time and leaves late inserts unchecked.
2. Extract every case citation
Pull every full case cite and every short form that depends on a prior full cite. Include string cites in footnotes and tables. Manual highlighting works for short briefs; for long filings, use software that extracts citations automatically.
3. Resolve each cite to an opinion
Look up each citation in a primary caselaw database — not in the same LLM that drafted the brief. Confirm the case name, court, and year match. If nothing resolves, treat the cite as unsafe until you find another source or remove it.
4. Read enough of the opinion
Open the opinion (or official PDF). Confirm the proposition you attribute to it appears in the text. Pin cites help; they do not replace reading.
5. Check subsequent history and treatment
Ask whether later decisions undermine the point you are relying on. Editorial citators (KeyCite, Shepard’s) remain the gold standard for many practitioners. Corpus-based treatment signals — overruled, reversed, questioned — are a strong second line when you need a free or product-integrated check.
6. Fix, then re-check the deltas
Replace or delete bad cites. Re-run extraction on changed paragraphs so new AI or human edits do not slip through.
7. Keep an audit trail
Save the report, timestamps, and links to opinions you relied on. If a court or client asks what you checked, you should be able to show it.
Where to cite-check a brief (free and paid)
| Option | Best for | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| CiteDiver on LawDiver | Whole-brief upload; free during rollout; corpus of 10M+ U.S. opinions | Account required; not a claim of full Shepard’s/KeyCite parity |
| LawDiver caselaw API | Cite-check inside your own legal app or pipeline | Developer integration |
| Westlaw KeyCite / Lexis Shepard’s | Full editorial citator workflows many firms already buy | Cost; not free |
| Manual lookup (Google Scholar, court sites, LII) | Spot-checking a handful of cites | Slow at document scale; weak on treatment |
If your question is literally where to citecheck a brief without a subscription seat for every associate: start with CiteDiver, then read any flagged opinions yourself before filing.
How to cite-check a brief with CiteDiver
- Create a free LawDiver account (free during rollout).
- Open CiteDiver and upload the PDF or Word brief.
- Review each citation result: resolved, unresolved, and treatment signals.
- Open underlying opinions for anything material or flagged.
- Fix the brief and keep the downloadable findings with the matter file.
CiteDiver is cite checking software for legal work, not a second LLM pass. Unresolved cites are flagged rather than silently approved. For why that distinction matters, read Your Cite Checker Is Probably Just Another LLM and Why Do Large Language Models Hallucinate?.
Common failure modes
- Trusting the drafter model to verify its own cites. It will often double down on fabrications.
- Existence-only checks. A real case cited for the wrong rule still loses motions and credibility.
- Skipping short forms. “Id.” and “supra” errors hide bad authority.
- Checking an old draft. The filed version is what the court reads.
Related LawDiver resources
- Free cite checking software
- CiteDiver product page
- Free caselaw API (document and single-cite endpoints)
- Where to search caselaw
- Lawyer AI ethics rules and filings (2026)
Cite-checking does not replace judgment. It makes judgment possible under time pressure — and it is how you keep hallucinated authority out of the record.