| name | authority-verification |
| language | en |
| description | Verifies legal citations and retrieves source material using the case.dev Legal Research API and CLI. Use when validating a citation, confirming a case exists, pulling source text, finding related authorities, extracting citations from a brief or opinion, or building a filing-ready authority check without branded citator terminology. |
Authority Verification with case.dev
Use case.dev legal research endpoints to verify citations, retrieve source text, and expand to related authorities. Keep the language generic: "verified citation," "candidate authority," "related authority," and "manual treatment review."
Quick Start
- Verify the citation text with
legal.verify() before citing it.
- If verification is unclear, search by topic with
legal.find() or legal.research().
- Pull the full document text with
legal.fullText() once you have a verified source URL.
- Expand outward with
legal.similar() to find related authorities.
- Format the result using references/OUTPUT-TEMPLATE.md.
Reference guide: references/CASEDEV-WORKFLOW.md
Runtime and setup: references/RUNTIME.md
Concrete scenarios: references/EXAMPLES.md
Lightweight eval set: references/EVALS.md
Examples:
Core Workflow
1. Verify the citation
Use legal.verify() with the citation text exactly as written.
verified means the citation matched a real source in the database.not_found means likely typo, hallucination, or unsupported citation.multiple_matches means manual review is required before citation.
2. Retrieve the source text
If verification succeeds, use the returned case URL with legal.fullText() to inspect the opinion and optionally highlight the issue you care about.
3. Expand the authority set
Use legal.similar() on the verified source URL to find related authorities.
Use legal.research() when you need broader issue-based research with multiple phrasings of the same question.
4. Audit a document
If you are checking a brief, opinion, or article URL, use legal.citationsFromUrl() to extract cited authorities, then verify important citations individually.
5. Record the result
Always record:
- the exact citation checked
- verification status
- authoritative URL
- jurisdiction used for search
- date checked
- any manual review needed before filing
Guardrails
- Do not say a case was "Shepardized," "KeyCited," or given a proprietary signal.
- Do not describe case.dev results as editorial treatment analysis unless you performed separate manual review.
- Say "verified citation" instead of "good law."
- Say "manual treatment review required" when the workflow does not establish precedential weight by itself.
- Search results are candidates, not filing-ready authorities, until verified.
- Re-run verification immediately before filing.
Output Standard
Format the final work product using references/OUTPUT-TEMPLATE.md.
Dependencies
Do not assume tools are installed. Check references/RUNTIME.md before running any script.
Pitfalls
- Verifying only the case name and not the reporter citation.
- Treating
legal.find() results as verified authorities.
- Assuming related cases from
legal.similar() are citing references or direct history.
- Skipping the full-text read after verification.
- Hiding uncertainty when the result is
multiple_matches or not_found.
