Research and citation verification
The agent reads only the sources its mandate names and ties every proposition to one of them, and every citation is opened and checked on four points before the memo reaches the lawyer who signs.
Verification is a gate, not a step.
Who it is for
A firm where associates draft and partners sign, and where a wrong case reference is a professional problem before it is a client problem. In 2026 that stopped being hypothetical in Türkiye: in a Kısa Dalga interview of 17 June 2026, a lawyer described a petition that carried Yargıtay citations with fabricated case numbers and said the court wrote to the prosecutor and the bar the same day; those are the interviewee’s statements, not a court finding. In-house legal teams set up the same workflow; the difference there is that the measure looks to the board’s question rather than to the client. This is the workflow I would start with in most firms, because the failure it prevents is specific and the check is easy to measure.
The trigger
A research question from a partner or a client, or a draft that cites authority and is about to leave the firm.
The question is bound to its matter and requester before work begins.
The stages
Question
The question is written down with its matter, requester and jurisdiction, the date on which the law is being stated, and what the answer will be used for.
Sources
The agent may read the sources named in its mandate and nothing else.
Draft
The memo is drafted with every proposition tied to a source. No unsourced proposition is written.
Verify
This is the gate. Every citation is opened in the official reporter or the subscribed database and checked on four points: the reference exists; the quotation matches the text word for word; the decision says what the memo says it says; the authority is still good law on the date the memo states the law for. Each check is written to the log with its result and the time.
Flag
Anything that fails any of the four is flagged to the lawyer with the failure named. A failed citation remains visible in the draft with the reason it was not verified. It is never silently dropped and it is never replaced by the agent.
Sign
The memo and verification log go together to the named lawyer, who signs, corrects or returns them. The signature covers both documents, including the reasoning as well as the checks.
File
The memo, the source list and the verification log are stored together as one record.
What the agent may read, keep and do
| May read | Only the sources named in the mandate. In Türkiye that is usually the firm’s own archive, the legislation at mevzuat.gov.tr, the Yargıtay, Danıştay and Anayasa Mahkemesi decision searches, UYAP Emsal, and whichever commercial database the firm subscribes to. It may not ask another model whether a case exists. |
|---|---|
| May keep | During the session, the question, found texts and draft. After it, only what is written into the record, for the retention period agreed with you: the source list, the quotations checked and the result of each check. No copy of subscription content beyond what the firm’s licence allows. |
| May do | Search the named sources, draft, run the four checks, write the log, and raise a flag. It may not file anything, send the memo outside the matter or to a client, write to the archive, or add a source to its own list. |
Where a person signs
Stage 06, and only there. The verification note carries the name of the lawyer who signs, and that lawyer is the one who answers for the memo afterwards. The Union of Turkish Bar Associations published its advisory guide on AI use by lawyers on 28 August 2026. It keeps professional secrecy, personal data, the client’s interest, final legal reasoning and professional responsibility with the lawyer. This workflow is built to leave all five exactly there, and to make the verification showable.
The signer is the matter lawyer or, according to the firm’s practice, a partner. The lawyer sees the memo, each citation’s verification result and the list of unverified citations with their reasons. The signature covers the memo and the verification log together.
What the record contains
The verification log is a firm record, and it should outlive both the tool and me.
These are the fields, not a real matter. No client work appears on this site.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Question | The question asked, the requester, the time asked and the jurisdiction it is asked in |
| Date of law | The date on which the law is being stated |
| Mandate | The mandate version, so the permitted sources are known |
| Citations | Every citation and its location in the memo, with a separate result and time for each of the four checks |
| Flags | Every flag raised, and how it was resolved |
| Drafter | The person who drafted the memo |
| Verifier | The lawyer who signed the verification note |
| Signature | The time of signature, and the memo version signed |
| Matter | The matter identifier and the question’s link to it |
| Model | The model and version used |
| Decision | The lawyer’s decision on the memo and its verification log |
Entries are written as the run happens and are append-only. A correction is a new entry naming the one it corrects. Section 5 of the operating standard says what that means in practice.
The measure a pilot uses
One measure, chosen by you. The one I would choose is the share of citations that pass all four checks at the first attempt, against a baseline taken from a set of your own recent memos. Reviewer minutes per memo is recorded for information, not as a second acceptance measure, and it matters more than it looks. A pilot that improves the first while making the second worse has helped nobody.
The critical error is an unverified citation appearing as verified. Tolerance is zero: one such error prevents the workflow from passing the gate and from running unsupervised.
The systems it usually sits on
The firm’s own archive or document system, which in a larger firm is usually iManage, NetDocuments or SharePoint. A commercial database, usually Lexpera, Kazancı, Legalbank or Kanunum. The free official sources: mevzuat.gov.tr, the Yargıtay and Danıştay decision search, UYAP Emsal and the Anayasa Mahkemesi decisions bank. Where a firm already runs an assistant such as Harvey, CoCounsel, Lexis+ with Protégé, Legora, vLex Vincent, or Jupytr, LegalEngine or SmartHukuk in Türkiye, this workflow is built around it rather than in place of it. The verification gate sits after whatever that tool produced. LEXSAS resells none of these and claims no certified connector to any of them. Where the firm has no subscription, the workflow runs on the free official sources only, and that limit is written into the engagement brief.
The first week
- Day one
- The scope call: practice area, who drafts, who signs, which databases the firm subscribes to, the measure.
- Days two and three
- We take a set of recent memos and count how their citations behave today. That count is the baseline, and it is the number the rest of the pilot is measured against.
- Day four
- The mandate and the four checks are written against your own sources, and you correct them. Fifteen to twenty memos are selected for the gold set and stored with their citations manually verified.
- Day five
- The gate is run against the gold set, the log format and the wording of the verification note are agreed, and the pilot dates are fixed.
The engagement brief determines the sequence for each assignment. This is the usual order of work, not a timetable commitment.
Exit terms
Everything below is yours from the first day and leaves with you in an exportable format, whatever happens to the workflow:
- The permitted source list and its version history
- The mandate
- The gate rules and the four checks
- The log format
- The gold set with manually verified answers
- Every verification log
- The workflow definition and the design brief
The verification logs in particular are firm records held within the firm, and they should be able to outlive both the tool and me.
Three questions
It flags it and stops. An unverified citation does not leave the workflow, and the agent has no authority to substitute a different case that looks similar.
The drafting does not change. The check does, because it runs against the primary text every time rather than when somebody remembers. Reviewer minutes per memo is a secondary figure that tells you whether the trade is worth it, which is why the pilot counts it for information.
Yes, and that is the usual case. The gate sits after the assistant’s output, on the same four checks, whatever produced the draft.
The controls behind this page are in the LEXSAS operating standard, sections 3 to 6. The reasoning is in AI citation errors: a verification protocol for legal teams. The other three firm workflows: matter intake and engagement scoping, drafting from precedent and matter record and client reporting. All eight workflows are on the workflows page. Get in touch