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How citations are checked

No citation without a source paragraph.

A made-up case in a bail application costs a lawyer more than time. So the agents in Wakeelnama are not trusted to write citations at all. They point at passages the library actually returned, and the Checker confirms each one before you see it.

The pipeline

From search to citation, step by step.

This is what happens to every authority on the case board, in a research answer and in a draft. The examples are placeholders, not real cases.

  1. The library is searched, and passages are handed over as handles

    The Researcher searches statutes and judgments for the issue. The passages that come back are given to the agent with short handles, never as citations.

    • P1Judgment A, para 14
    • P2Judgment B, para 9
    • P3Section 5 of a statute

  2. The agent writes, citing only by handle

    Each point the agent makes names the handle it rests on, with the exact words it quotes. It cannot cite anything that was not in the search results.

    A sentence in the draft, resting on P2 and quoting “its exact words”.

  3. The handle must resolve

    The handle has to be one of the passages search returned for this question. A handle that is not is removed from the card, and the card says so.

    • pass continue
    • fail removed

  4. The quote must match, word for word

    Quoted words are matched character for character against the stored paragraph, after spaces and quote marks are evened out. Words left out with an ellipsis must still appear in order.

    • pass continue
    • not verified marked in red

  5. The passage must support the sentence

    In live mode a second, separate model reads only the passage and the sentence, and says whether the passage supports it. A passage that merely mentions the same section is not enough.

    • checked
    • partly supports
    • not verified

  6. Negative treatment is flagged

    Our citator follows how later judgments in the library treated each judgment. If one was overruled or otherwise treated negatively, the citation carries a warning before it reaches your draft.

    • treated negatively flagged

  7. The app writes the citation

    Only now is the handle turned into a citation, from the stored paragraph itself. On a draft, the Checker's report lists every citation, which passed and which need a look. A draft is marked checked only when none do.

And when there is nothing to cite: if the library has no authority on a point, the board shows “No authority found yet” for that issue. An honest gap is better than a confident guess.
On the board

What the badges mean.

Every citation shows one of these beside it, and opens the full paragraph when you tap it.

checked
The passage exists, any quote matched, and the support check found that it supports the sentence.
partly supports
Relevant, but the sentence claims more than the passage says. Read it before you rely on it.
not verified
The quote did not match the stored text, or the passage does not support the sentence.
found
The passage exists and any quote matched, but no support check ran, as in demo mode.
What we do not promise

Checks narrow the risk. Reading the judgment closes it.

The library is still small: 0 statutes and 0 judgments today. A point it does not hold is a point you research yourself.

The support check is a model's reading. It can be wrong in either direction, which is why every citation opens the paragraph it rests on.

Citator signals only know the judgments in our library, not every later case in the law reports.

Read the full guide or try it on a case of your own.