Courts across the country are increasingly sanctioning attorneys who submit briefs containing invented case citations, a well-documented byproduct of generative AI drafting tools that produce authoritative-sounding, but entirely fictional, legal authority. CiteSentinel was designed to close that verification gap, giving attorneys a fast and easy way to confirm that every citation in a filing corresponds to a real case, a real statute, and a real legal authority.
Recently launched by legal tech startup BrentWorks Inc., the tool scans legal documents and flags case law, statutes and legal authorities that may be fabricated, misstated or otherwise erroneous, before they reach a judge.
Many attorneys who do not personally use AI to draft documents are discovering they have a problem anyway. Opposing counsel may have used AI. Co-counsel may have. Contract attorneys and paralegals almost certainly have access to it and may be using it without disclosing that fact. When a brief containing fabricated citations reaches the court, the question of who drafted it quickly becomes secondary to the question of whose name is on it.
CiteSentinel lets attorneys scan any document — their own, a colleague’s or an adversary’s — for citation errors before those errors become their problem, whether they were hallucinated, misstated or inaccurately referenced. Attorneys who review opposing counsel’s filings with CiteSentinel gain an additional advantage: the ability to identify and challenge citations to authorities that simply do not exist.
BrentWorks was founded by Brent Britton, a veteran technology attorney and MIT-trained engineer, and Brent Hunter, a longtime technologist and AI pioneer.
