Product Coming soon
ForeCite
Authority and citation verification for England and Wales. ForeCite extracts every citation in a document, checks each one against official sources and reports exactly what was and wasn't verified.
Coming soon. Interested? Get in touch
Overview
AI-assisted drafting has made fabricated, mis-pinpointed and mis-quoted authorities an everyday risk. The courts of England and Wales expect lawyers to verify every authority they cite against the primary sources, and can require them to show that they have. Re-checking every authority in every skeleton argument, statement and advice by hand is rarely practical.
ForeCite checks the authorities in a document, however it was drafted. As a Microsoft Word add-in and a web upload, it:
- Extracts every citation: neutral citations for all the courts and tribunals of England and Wales, law report citations, legislation references (Acts with their sections and subsections, and statutory instruments), and CPR rules and Practice Directions.
- Checks each one against official sources: The National Archives' Find Case Law, legislation.gov.uk (in the version in force at a date you choose), and deep links to ICLR and BAILII.
- Checks pinpoints and quotations: that the cited paragraph or provision exists, and that quoted passages really appear there, with a similarity score and any differences highlighted.
- Produces a Verification Report, in the app and as a PDF: for each citation, the level it reached, a green, amber or red status, what was found and a link to the source, together with the document's hash, when it was checked and by whom, and a suggested verification statement. Reports are stored for the firm's audit trail.
Graded results. Every citation gets a verification level, so you can see exactly what was and wasn't verified. Levels L0 to L4 are deterministic checks against the sources:
| Level | What is checked |
|---|---|
| L0 | The citation is well formed and recognised |
| L1 | The authority exists: the citation resolves to an actual judgment or provision |
| L2 | The details match: the case name, court and year agree with the citation |
| L3 | The pinpoint exists: the cited paragraph is in the judgment or, for legislation, the section or subsection exists in the version in force at the relevant date |
| L4 | The quotation matches: the quoted text appears at the pinpoint |
Two further checks are planned: whether an authority supports the proposition it is cited for, and how it has been treated since.
Who it is for: barristers and chambers, litigation teams, costs lawyers and in-house legal teams.
What it does not do: legal research, drafting, summarising judgments or predicting outcomes. ForeCite checks what the lawyer wrote; it does not write.
Requirements
- Microsoft Word for the add-in.
- A modern web browser for the web upload.
- Documents in .docx format.
- Authorities from England and Wales first; other jurisdictions later.
Configuration
How it will work
ForeCite is not available yet. This is the planned workflow:
- Check a document. Upload a .docx file in your browser, or open the document in Word and run the check from the add-in.
- Review the results. Each citation is listed with the level it reached, a green, amber or red status, what was found and a link to the source.
- Export the report. Save the Verification Report as a PDF, with its suggested verification statement, to keep with the document.