Grounding citations in a draft
Run it
Open the document you are drafting. In the toolbar above the editor, at the right-hand end beside Export .docx and Translate this document, is Ground citations — a book icon whose hover help reads Ground citations against CourtListener and this matter's corpus.
While it runs the button is disabled and a line under the toolbar says Grounding citations against CourtListener and this matter's corpus…
When it finishes, the surface says how many citations were grounded — for example Grounded 4 citation(s) against CourtListener + the matter corpus. — and a panel appears under the toolbar. If you edit the draft after a run, press Ground citations again; the panel then shows the matches for the text that is currently in the editor.
What it checks against
Grounding reads the live text of the editor — what is on screen right now, including edits you have not saved — and looks for supporting authority in two places:
- CourtListener, the public case-law database.
- The matter's own corpus, meaning the documents that have been uploaded and indexed into this matter.
Each result carries a tag saying which of the two it came from, so you can tell at a glance whether a line is supported by reported case law or by something in the firm's own file for this matter.
Read the results
The panel is headed Grounded authority (N). Each entry shows:
- The name — a case name for case law, or the filename for something from the matter corpus.
- A small tag naming the source it came from.
- The citation text, and the year in brackets where one is known.
- A link, where the source provides one. Following it leaves the app.
- A line reading supports: …, naming the proposition in your draft that the authority was matched to.
If nothing is matched, the panel says so plainly: No supporting authority found for the current text.
How to read an empty or thin result
An empty panel means nothing was matched against those two sources for the text as it currently stands. It is not a verdict on your citations. Common reasons a run comes back thin:
- The draft is still an outline, or the propositions are stated without citation language for the search to work from.
- The relevant authority is not in CourtListener and has not been uploaded into this matter.
- You ran it on a short passage rather than the finished section.
The useful move is usually to draft the passage further, or add the source document to the matter, and run it again.
If it fails
A failure is shown on the document as an error line rather than an empty panel, so you can tell "nothing found" apart from "the check did not run". Try again; if it keeps failing, say so in the composer and quote the message.
Where the control is not available
Ground citations appears only for a document you are editing as text. It is not offered for a document brought in with Received file… — that document opens in its own editor and returns as the sender's own file.
What grounding does not do
- It does not change your document. Nothing is inserted, reformatted, or footnoted; the panel is a reading, not an edit.
- It does not create or save a version. Save version remains the only thing that commits your text — the editor says the same of any text the assistant places for you.
- It does not report negative treatment. A result means supporting authority was matched, not that the case is still good law — checking subsequent history remains your own step.
- It does not tell you a citation in your draft is wrong or invented. A proposition absent from the panel is an unmatched proposition, not a flagged error.