Research and citation verification
For a firm where associates draft and partners sign, and a wrong reference is a professional problem. The stages, the agent’s mandate, the verification gate, the record fields, the measure and the exit terms.
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. 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 stages
Question
The question is written down with the 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.
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. 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 is never silently dropped and it is never replaced by the agent.
Sign
A named lawyer signs the verification note. The signature covers 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 | 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 anything to a client, 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.
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 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, with the result of each of the four checks and its time |
| 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 |
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 the second, and it matters more than it looks. A pilot that improves the first while making the second worse has helped nobody.
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, and the verification gate sits after whatever that tool produced. LEXSAS resells none of these and claims no certified connector to any of them.
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. The baseline is the argument, and it is usually the moment the room goes quiet.
- Day four
- The mandate and the four checks are written against your own sources, and you correct them.
- Day five
- The log format and the wording of the verification note are agreed, and the pilot dates are fixed.
Exit terms
The source list, the mandate, the four checks, the log format, the evaluation set and every verification log are yours in an exportable format from the first day. The verification logs in particular are firm records, 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 the measure that tells you whether the trade is worth it, which is why the pilot counts it.
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. Get in touch