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The Bench & Bar AI Brief | Issue 001

Before You Rely On An AI Citation

A practical first step for the bench and bar: verify the authority outside the AI tool.

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Tennessee Edition

Welcome to The Bench & Bar AI Brief.

The first issue starts with a basic courtroom risk: an AI-generated citation can look complete, confident, and usable while still being wrong. A case name can look plausible. A quoted passage can sound authoritative. A rule summary can read cleanly. None of that proves the authority exists or supports the point being made.

The practical answer is not panic. It is verification.

The site's AI Citation Verification Checklist gives a simple process for AI-assisted legal work.

  1. 1Locate the authority outside the AI tool.
  2. 2Confirm the citation details.
  3. 3Read the cited passage in context.
  4. 4Check current validity.
  5. 5Preserve the verification path.
  6. 6Do not rely on unsupported authority.

That process is useful for lawyers before filing, judges and clerks reviewing AI-assisted filings, and court leaders setting expectations for responsible AI use.

Why it matters.

Citation verification is one of the clearest places where AI risk becomes ordinary legal work. The question is not whether a lawyer or judge can use AI. The question is whether the human professional checked the authority before using it.

Checklist.

Use this quick review before filing, relying on, or circulating AI-assisted legal work.

  • Find every AI-generated case, statute, rule, quotation, and source summary in an independent legal database, official source, or court record.
  • Check names, reporter information, docket numbers, court, date, pin cites, rule numbers, section numbers, and quoted language.
  • Read enough context to confirm the authority actually supports the proposition.
  • Check whether later law has reversed, superseded, amended, limited, questioned, or otherwise affected the authority.
  • Keep a record of where and when the authority was checked.
  • Remove, replace, or escalate any authority that cannot be verified.

Ethics and risk note.

AI can help organize legal work, but it cannot carry the lawyer's duty to verify authority or the court's duty to evaluate what is filed. Treat every AI-generated citation as unverified until it has been checked against an authoritative source.

Read the AI Citation Verification Checklist

Question for local discussion: What verification record should a lawyer, judge, clerk, or court administrator expect to see when AI-assisted work includes legal citations or quoted authority?

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