AI can produce a citation that looks convincing and is still wrong. Avantwerk therefore treats citation review as an export control, not as a claim that the model is always right.

What the product checks

Each recognised neutral citation handled by the England and Wales matter route is checked live against The National Archives’ Find Case Law service. A match confirms only that the citation appears in that service; it does not confirm that the case supports the proposition, remains good law or has not been appealed. Coverage varies, so a non-match is reported as “not found in Find Case Law” and requires solicitor review. Contains information licensed under the Open Justice - Licence v2.0.

That check is deliberately narrow. A register match confirms that a judgment is present at the cited neutral citation. It does not confirm that the judgment supports the proposition in the draft, that a quoted paragraph is accurate, or that the authority remains the best law for the point. Those remain professional decisions for the solicitor.

Statutory references take a different route. A case-law register cannot verify an Act or statutory instrument. The product marks those references for review and provides an official-source link to legislation.gov.uk so the solicitor can confirm the provision and its current text.

Where the gate sits

The gate runs before export or in-product signing. It extracts recognised authorities and holds the document when a reference is unmarked, unconfirmed, malformed, not found in the configured register, or could not be checked because the source was unavailable.

A solicitor may release the document despite a warning. That requires the name of the person authorising the release, and the unresolved items and decision are written to the matter audit trail. A document with no recognised citations is reported as not checked, never as verified.

The professional decision stays with the solicitor

The product does not decide whether an authority proves the argument. It separates machine confirmation of an identifier from legal assessment of relevance, currency and weight. The software supplies the check and the evidence trail; the solicitor remains responsible for the final document.

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