Check each authority in a submission before it is signed
Key facts
- Human involvement
- RedLawyer-led
- How AI is used
- Extract every case, statute, and rule citation from the submission, with the page, and leave a column for the lawyer to record the official text that was opened. Do not mark a citation as correct and do not add a case.
- What the lawyer must review
- Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b) provides that an attorney who presents a pleading, written motion, or other paper to the court, by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it, certifies that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances, the legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law. That certification is made when the submission is presented. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (29 July 2024) requires the lawyer to check output from a generative tool, including citations. The lawyer opens the reporter, the official code, or the court rule for each citation and fills the result. The worksheet does not do that check.
- Written for / version
- United States versionUS
Who does what
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Assistance | Supporting preparation only. Potential support includes organising research leads and extracting and organising information. Confirm the tool’s capability and permitted scope. The tool writes nothing into the document. Substantive advice, judgement and any restricted content remain with the responsible human. |
| Lawyer | Perform the substantive analysis and decisions. Independently check any permitted supporting work and approve the exact output for its intended use. |
Checklist
- Open each relied-on authority independently. Confirm its existence, current status, proposition and any quotation or pinpoint reference.
- Check the current court or regulator requirements, prescribed form and attachments for the intended document and filing.
- Confirm the output against the client’s instructions and the complete relevant source material, including omissions or contradictions.
- Resolve exceptions and record the responsible lawyer’s approval of the exact output and intended use.
Forms and precedents for this task
| Form or precedent | Kind | AI use | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generative-AI filing certification worksheet | Checklist | AI use Red | Worksheet for the lawyer who must certify a federal filing under Rule 11 and under the assigned judge's standing order on generative AI. |
Signed-in accounts can read the full text of each one. All precedents.