Cite-check a draft brief and list every citation to verify
Extracts every citation and quotation from a draft, checks format and internal consistency, and builds a verification table for the team.
The prompt
Help me cite-check a draft brief or memo.
Draft: [PASTE]
Citation style required: [e.g. Bluebook, local court rules, OSCOLA]
Court / jurisdiction: [DETAILS]
Record or exhibit references used: [e.g. "Ex. 12", "App. 45", "ECF No. 30"]
You cannot confirm that a case or statute exists or says what the draft claims, so do not try. Instead:
1. List every citation in order: Page/para in draft | Citation as written | Proposition it supports | Pinpoint given? | Quotation? | Short form or id. used.
2. Check format against the required style and suggest corrections (italics, abbreviations, reporters, court and year, pinpoints, signals, parentheticals).
3. Check internal consistency: short forms that appear before the full cite, "id." used after an intervening cite, inconsistent case names, mismatched record cites.
4. Flag every direct quotation for word-for-word checking against the source.
5. Flag statements of law with no citation, and citations that seem to stretch the proposition (e.g. a broad claim resting on one case).
6. Flag anything that looks unusual and must be confirmed in a primary source and checked for subsequent history (overruled, reversed, amended statute).
Return: the verification table with a Status column left blank for the checker, a list of format corrections, and a list of [VERIFY FIRST] high-priority items. Every citation must be checked in an authoritative legal database by a qualified person before filing.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Legal & Compliance prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE
- e.g. Bluebook, local court rules, OSCOLA
- DETAILS
- e.g. "Ex. 12", "App. 45", "ECF No. 30"
- VERIFY FIRST
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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