Question 1

How does the citation check work?

Accepted Answer

We extract the legal citations from the text you paste or the file you upload — up to 25 per check — then run each one through two checks. First, existence: we look the citation up live against the official source — OpenLaws for statutes and regulations (over 4 million sections across all 53 US jurisdictions: 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and federal) and CourtListener for US court opinions (over 9 million decisions from 2,000+ courts). Second, support: where the source is found, we read its own text — plus a live web search — to judge whether it actually backs the claim it's attached to. Citations we can't match are flagged for manual review; citations that exist but don't back the claim are flagged as possibly misused.

Question 2

How many citations do you check at once?

Accepted Answer

Up to 25 per check. That covers most briefs and memos outright. If your text contains more than 25 citations we check the first 25 and the results page says so — every citation past the 25th is never looked up, and a clean result does not cover it. On a long brief, split the document and run it in parts. This is a deliberate bound on what each free check costs to run, not an estimate.

Question 3

Why do I need to enter my email for the full report?

Accepted Answer

The tool is free, so we ask for an email in exchange for the full verification breakdown. You'll see the summary and full detail for the first 3 citations (highest-risk first) immediately; the remaining citations unlock after email. No signup, no credit card, no password.

Question 4

Does 'Not found' mean a citation is fabricated?

Accepted Answer

Not necessarily. It means the live lookup didn't return a match — the citation could be fabricated, mis-cited, very obscure, from a municipal code, a foreign jurisdiction, a treatise, or an unpublished opinion. Always review 'Not found' citations manually before relying on them.

Question 5

Do you store the text I paste?

Accepted Answer

CaseRead does not persist the pasted text anywhere in our systems — only aggregate counts (how many citations were found, how many verified) are recorded against your email. To run the check, your text and the citations we extract from it are sent to a few external services: Anthropic (Claude) extracts the citations and judges whether each source supports its claim; OpenLaws and CourtListener receive the individual citations to look them up; federal enacted-law citations (public laws, Federal Register documents, CFR sections) may also be checked directly against three U.S. government sources — GovInfo, the eCFR, and the Federal Register; and Brave receives search queries derived from each citation for the web cross-check. Each provider's standard API policy applies. One exception: if you run a check while signed in to a CaseRead account, the verification results (not the raw pasted text) are saved to your private history so you can return to them. If you're handling privileged material and need stricter data-handling guarantees, please contact us before using the tool.

Question 6

What does it cost?

Accepted Answer

Free — every visitor gets 2 checks per day. CaseRead members on a paid plan get unlimited checks in the in-app Shield, plus a saved verification history and supporting evidence pulled from their own firm's vault. This is a public utility we maintain as part of CaseRead.ai, our AI-powered legal research platform — starting an account is free, no credit card required.

Question 7

How accurate is it?

Accepted Answer

Accuracy depends on the coverage of the sources we look up — OpenLaws, which covers all 53 US jurisdictions (50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and federal, including the US Code and CFR), and CourtListener for US court opinions. Ambiguous citations (short forms, partial references) are flagged as 'inconclusive' so you can review them yourself.

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