Legal research
Legal AI for legal research and authority verification
Legal AI research should distinguish matter analysis from authority verification, preserve citations and treatment, and make it clear when live authority research was unavailable or incomplete.
Quick answer
A credible legal AI research workflow should separate the facts in the client record from the public legal research task, retrieve relevant authorities from approved sources, preserve citations and treatment, and refuse to present an unverified authority as confirmed law.
Reviewed September 2026
Separation
Matter confidentiality should not be the search query
A research worker often does not need the client's names, amounts or private documents. The system can derive a public-safe abstract legal question and run authority research against that brief while keeping confidential matter payloads out of the external search request.
Sanctum's Authority Check architecture is designed around that separation so source-grounded matter analysis can continue independently from public authority verification.
Verification
Citations are not enough
A citation should be checked for existence, court, date, proposition, pinpoint and subsequent treatment where the research source supports it. A fluent citation string is not authority verification.
The product should also distinguish primary authority from commentary and tell the lawyer when the search route could not complete rather than manufacturing confidence.
Workflow
Research should remain reviewable
The lawyer should be able to move from an AI proposition to the authority, inspect the source, understand why it was selected and carry verified authorities into drafting or hearing preparation.
That continuity is more useful than treating legal research as a separate chatbot that loses the matter question after producing a list of cases.
Frequently asked questions
Can legal AI hallucinate case citations?
Yes. That is why firms should require authority verification, source links or official citations, and an explicit state when research could not be completed.
What is Authority Check?
In Sanctum Lex, Authority Check is the verification workflow that separates a public-safe research brief from private matter analysis and uses an approved search-capable route to verify legal authorities.
Should legal research AI use client documents in web search?
Usually not unless the workflow explicitly requires it and the firm permits it. A safer pattern is to derive a public legal question without exposing unnecessary client facts.
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