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Citation Verifier

Second Seat's Citation Verifier is a free tool that checks every legal citation in a block of text against authoritative sources. It is the same verification engine that powers our main product, now open for anyone to use.

Who it is for​

  • Attorneys reviewing AI-generated drafts before filing.
  • Paralegals and law clerks proofreading briefs and memos.
  • Supervising attorneys verifying work product from junior associates.
  • Any legal professional who wants a fast sanity check against fabricated or misremembered citations.

Where to find it​

app.secondseat.ai/verify

No account is required for first use. Signed-in Second Seat users get the same tool inside their authenticated workspace.

What it does​

  1. You paste legal text (a brief, motion, memo, or AI-generated draft).
  2. The verifier extracts every legal citation in the text.
  3. Each case-law citation is checked against the authoritative record (CourtListener, with Harvard CAP as a secondary source) on three axes:
    • Existence — is this a real case, not a hallucination?
    • Quote / pin-cite support — does the opinion actually contain the quoted language and the page cited?
    • Jurisdiction — was it decided by a court in the state you're working in?
  4. Statutes and regulations are checked for existence against the US Code, the eCFR, state legislature sites, and Cornell LII.
  5. You get back a structured report showing which citations are verified, which need review, and which could not be verified anywhere. Non-precedential decisions are flagged with an Unpublished badge.
  6. The original text is rendered below the report with every citation highlighted inline so you can see the flagged ones in context.

Setting a jurisdiction​

Above the input box is an optional Jurisdiction dropdown (New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, or Not specified). When you pick one, case-law citations whose deciding court sits in a different state are flagged for review — a fast way to catch an out-of-state authority pasted into a state-court filing. Leave it on Not specified to skip the jurisdiction check.

Inside the signed-in Second Seat app, chat citations use your firm's default jurisdiction automatically, so you don't have to set it each time.

What it does not do​

The verifier confirms that a citation exists and that the quoted language is present in the opinion. It does not:

  • Tell you whether the cited authority actually supports the proposition it is offered for.
  • Tell you whether the case is still good law (that is Shepard's or KeyCite territory).
  • Replace careful reading of the full source.

Treat a green badge as "this citation exists, the reporter details are plausible, and any quote we could check held up," and a yellow badge as "recognizable, but something needs a human look." A red badge is a strong signal to double-check before filing.

Free use and the waitlist​

Anyone can try the verifier without an account — the first five verifications are free. After that, you'll be prompted to join the waitlist to keep going. Signed-in Second Seat users have the tool built into their workspace without that limit.

Jurisdictions covered​

  • All federal courts via CourtListener.
  • All 50 states plus DC for case law via CourtListener and Harvard CAP. State-court coverage varies.
  • Federal statutes (US Code) and federal regulations (CFR).
  • All 50 states plus DC for statutes. Coverage quality varies by state: some are verified against the state's own legislature site, others via Cornell LII, and a few rely on structural-format validation only (see How to read the results).