What is substance verification?
Substance verification is confirming that a legal proposition holds, whom it favors, and whether it survived, not merely that the citation exists.
Two axes, one occupied.
Every tool now says “verified.” The word that still sells is not verified. It is what you verify: the document, or the proposition inside it.
Form verification, which is where most AI citation verification stops, confirms that a citation resolves to a real opinion, that the quote matches, and that the case as a whole carries a status. It is the commodity floor. Substance verification confirms that the proposition you are relying on is the holding rather than dicta, favors your party, governs in your forum at your procedural posture, is still good law at the line you cited, and has not already been rejected by the court you are in front of.
| Axis | Form verification | Substance verification |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | The document | The proposition |
| Question | Does the case exist and say these words? | Does the proposition hold, for whom, where, at this stage, still? |
| Status | Case-level flag | Proposition-level status, checked against the source lines |
| Negative space | Not modeled | Rejected arguments indexed and searchable |
| When it happens | At query time, invisibly | At ingestion, once, audited and published |
Five criteria, and a sixth.
Verify what the citation stands for, not just that it exists
The proposition, checked against the source lines it came from.
Be built so it can’t fabricate, by construction, not by instruction
No model in the citation path. The citation is retrieved, verified and locked.
Hand you provenance you could show a judge
Every proposition with the source attached, and a sealed record at filing.
Give you a published standard
A benchmark with a published methodology rather than a vendor’s own accuracy claim.
Not leave you carrying the risk alone
You sign every call; the output is backed by insurance.
Without renting the underlying law
Built from the open corpus. No data tax between you and the source.
The test a vendor can fail.
Seven questions to ask any legal research vendor, including us.
Demonstration-based, in terms any librarian can apply without vendor cooperation. Our own products should be evaluated by the same seven, and can fail them.
- Compound constraints honored?
Ask for authority favoring one party, on one point, at one posture, in one forum. A product that honors constraints returns nothing for the query that has no answer.
- Validity tracked below the case?
Show a case whose holding was narrowed without being overruled. Does the product distinguish the surviving line from the dead one?
- Doctrines with shared vocabulary kept apart?
Two rules that use the same words in different areas of law. Does the product conflate them?
- Rejected arguments searchable as objects?
Ask what this court has refused to do on this theory.
- Reasoning trace inspectable?
Can you see how each authority was chosen, and hand that to a judge?
- Corpus scope and update latency disclosed?
What is in it, what is not, and how old is the newest treatment event?
- Human editorial provenance and accountability?
Who is accountable for a record being wrong, and how is a correction propagated?
From Good Law for What? (SSRN). Vendor names removed.