New online tool will check lawyers' sloppy AI-written briefs since they can't seem to be bothered

Lawyers who frequently employ AI to draft legal briefs face a significant obstacle: AI models often generate inaccurate case citations and misinterpret court opinions. A new tool called CiteProof aims to address this issue by meticulously examining briefs and filings for fabricated case citations and incorrectly quoted court opinions before they can lead to sanctions, fines, or embarrassing reprimands from judges.

This problem has persisted for years as lawyers have relied on AI for their work, with mixed results. While GPT-4 managed to pass a bar exam in 2023, it still suffered from hallucinations, as evidenced by Anthropic's lawyers mistakenly citing incorrect references during a copyright lawsuit defense.

CiteProof's spokesperson emphasized that the platform does not utilize AI models or probabilistic methods to detect AI hallucinations. Instead, it conducts direct and deterministic searches of public court records to verify the accuracy of the citations mentioned by AI-powered drafting tools. CiteProof asserts that their method does not transmit or store data on their servers, ensuring that all processing occurs within the United States.

The tool is free for individual checks and offers paid subscriptions for bulk scanning and more comprehensive reports. Although CiteProof cannot evaluate the quality of legal arguments, it serves as a useful safeguard to prevent the inclusion of fabricated citations in legal documents submitted to courts.