Syfert Legal Research

Audit ALL citations in a draft brief, motion, or memo at once (wraps syfert.com Brief Check). Extracts every reporter citation, verifies each exists, checks the case name the document claims against the real case (hallucination detection), checks each quoted passage word for word against the cited opinion's own text (misquote = not in that opinion; unquoted_by_courts = the text could not be compared and no court has quoted those words from the case: check it with verify_quote), traces an unmatched quote to the case the language actually ORIGINATES in (quote_origin: attribute with "(quoting …)" or cite the source), and returns treatment flags with replacement suggestions for red-flagged authority. Also audits every STATUTE, REGULATION and COURT-RULE citation in the document against the corpus that holds it, reported separately under "statutes" (verified=false means not found in that corpus, which is not proof the section is wrong). ALWAYS run this on a finished draft before delivering it. Use mode=attack on an OPPONENT's brief to get ammunition: distinguishing and criticizing citers for each of their cites. Text over the size cap (128KB anonymous, 512KB with a token) is cut before the audit and the response then carries stats.truncated_bytes plus an INCOMPLETE AUDIT warning. corrections lists every quote the cited opinion does not carry verbatim, with replace_with (the opinion's own words) and star_page, and every unresolved or name-mismatched citation. Each unresolved citation carries verdict (exists_unindexed = a real case our index lacks, confirmed by a citing opinion or by name -- keep it; not_indexed = unknown, weigh volume_coverage (thin 2019+ volumes make a miss weak evidence); interior_mismatch/strong = likely fabricated), so do not report every unresolved cite as a hallucination (MCP13_20260925). A pinpoint page written as a citation of its own is status pin_reference (stats.pin_references, not unresolved) and its correction gives cite_as (first page, then…

Verify a legal citation actually exists before using it. CASES: returns the real case at that citation, its treatment flag, and (if expected_case_name given) whether the name matches. This catches hallucinated or miscopied citations. A reporter cite that is not indexed comes back with a verdict, and the verdict is what to act on (MCP13_20260925): exists_unindexed = the case is REAL (a court in the corpus prints this exact citation, see cited_by_corpus, or the case is found by name and year, see name_candidates) and only our reporter index lacks it -- never call it a hallucination; not_indexed = no evidence either way, read volume_coverage: for 2019+ volumes of the state regional reporters we often index under 30% of the cases (coverage_pct), so a miss there is weak evidence; interior_mismatch / strong = the page provably sits inside a differently named case, or the volume is complete and nothing turns up by name -- treat as likely fabricated. Local misses are also re-checked LIVE against CourtListener. STATUTES, REGULATIONS AND COURT RULES: a citation that is not a reporter cite is checked against the corpus that holds it (50 states + DC, 44 states' court rules, the Florida Administrative Code, USC/CFR/federal rules/USSG) and comes back with type, verified, the canonical citation, title, url and link_md; verified=false carries nearby sections and a coverage note, and is NEVER proof the section does not exist. ALWAYS use this to verify any citation that will appear in a legal document. With quote, the quoted words are checked against the opinion the cite resolves to (quote_check, the verify_quote block). PROPOSITION-LEVEL TREATMENT (MCP14_20260925): pass proposition (what you cite the case for; quote is used when proposition is absent) and treatment.proposition names the one proposition citing courts cite it for that matches, with its OWN flag, and treatment.proposition_note says when that point is flagged although the case is green (or unflagged although the case i…

Find the case to cite for a proposition. Paste the proposition or the language you need authority for VERBATIM; do not convert it to keywords. The result names the source case to cite (source_case), the verbatim passage, and how many courts have adopted it (quoted_by_cases); match_kind says how it matched: exact_phrase (the passage contains your words), relaxed (it shares your distinctive words), proposition (a rule later courts cite that case for). A miss means no court has quoted or been cited for that wording; try find_issues for the doctrine, or search_cases with 3-4 distinctive words. Routing: a proposition or quoted language -> find_authority (pasted verbatim); a doctrine name or fact pattern -> find_issues; a party name, statute number or keywords -> search_cases. Quotation marks mean pasted from a tool result (opinion text, passage, best_match). If you typed a quote from memory, run verify_quote and use best_match. Run check_brief on the finished draft and apply its corrections. Copy cite_as for the citation (first page, then pin). The first 3 rows carry star_page and cite_as.

Resolve a court name to court_id values usable in the search_cases court filter. Also resolves whole GROUPS of courts (tribal courts, veterans, bankruptcy, all U.S. district courts) to the single aggregate token that filters on all of them: see court_groups in the result.

ENTRY BY ISSUE. Use this FIRST when the question arrives as facts or an issue rather than a case name ("can the appellate court affirm on a ground the trial court never reached", "impact rule emotional distress", "Fabre defendant"). Returns (1) the doctrine as courts in that STATE actually name it, with the cases on EACH side (followed_by / questioned_by, from how each citing opinion treated the case), example sentences judges wrote, the statutes those opinions construe, and every state where the phrase is alive with its year span (a doctrine retained in one state and abandoned elsewhere shows as a stalled span); and (2) the matching mined propositions (the rule text courts quote) with per-passage flags. Doctrine name is not case health: an issue can be alive while its anchor case is red. Read questioned_by before relying on followed_by. A q of more than 8 substantive words is read as a proposition: propositions (matched against all of it) come first. The default answer holds 3 issues and 5 statutes and stays under ~12,000 characters (issues_omitted counts the rest); max_issues or detail=true returns more. Routing: a proposition or quoted language -> find_authority (pasted verbatim); a doctrine name or fact pattern -> find_issues; a party name, statute number or keywords -> search_cases.

Expand research from one good case: returns the doctrinal family it belongs to: the line of frequently co-cited cases around an anchor authority (curated set of ~1,500 major doctrinal lines; landmark cases only). Use when you have one on-point case and need the rest of the line. If the case has no family, fall back to get_citing_cases or search_cases.

Fetch one case: metadata, parallel citations, treatment flag, and full opinion text (paginated via offset/max_chars). cited_by is CourtListener's citation count; for a decision filed as several twin clusters it is summed over them (cited_by_note says so), and a duplicate or stub twin id is answered with its survivor (note says so). Citations inside the returned text are checked against the reporter index (embedded_citations); citation_warnings names any the court itself got wrong. Identify the case by cluster_id (from search_cases results) or by reporter citation. find_text returns passages: up to 5 sentence-bounded windows holding a phrase (or its closest match) with star_page and offset, so a long opinion need not be paged (pass include_text=false to get only those); quotable=true adds quotable_passages, the passages of this opinion other courts quote. Quotation marks mean pasted from a tool result (opinion text, passage, best_match). If you typed a quote from memory, run verify_quote and use best_match. Run check_brief on the finished draft and apply its corrections. Copy cite_as for the citation (first page, then pin).

Full citator list: every ranked case citing this one, with judge-written parentheticals (usable verbatim in a brief), verbatim quotes, pin cites, and the citing court's own Bluebook signal. Filter by flag color. Best for FINDING SUPPORTING AUTHORITY and parentheticals; for comprehensive negative-treatment checking use get_treatment (this list covers only each case's top-ranked ~50 citers).

What is this case actually cited FOR? Returns the distinct legal propositions courts cite the case for (headnote-grade), each with its OWN treatment flag and counts. A case can be good law on one proposition and overruled on another. Use before citing a case for a specific point, and to find the strongest proposition to cite it for. passage is the opinion's own wording of the proposition with its star_page; passage null means citing courts paraphrase it. Pass proposition (your use of the case) to get proposition_match, the one proposition it matches, and proposition_note (MCP14_20260925). Quotation marks mean pasted from a tool result (opinion text, passage, best_match). If you typed a quote from memory, run verify_quote and use best_match. Run check_brief on the finished draft and apply its corrections. Copy cite_as for the citation (first page, then pin).

Fetch the full current text of a statute, rule, or code section.

Is this case still good law? Returns the Syfertize treatment flag (red = overruled/superseded, yellow = questioned/distinguished, green = followed, procedural = cert/rehearing denied) plus the citing cases behind each signal with quoted context. A case can be green overall and red on the proposition you need it for (MCP14_20260925): propositions_summary lists the propositions courts cite it for (most-cited first), each with its OWN flag; pass proposition (your use of the case) and proposition_match returns the one that matches, with its negative_citers, and treatment.proposition_note states the result ("no proposition-level signal for this use" = only the case-level flag applies).

Full-text search over 10.7M U.S. court opinions (all states + federal, via syfert.com). Call this to find case law on a topic, locate a case by name, or find cases citing a statute. Routing: a proposition or quoted language -> find_authority (pasted verbatim); a doctrine name or fact pattern -> find_issues; a party name, statute number or keywords -> search_cases. Each hit carries bluebook and url (snippet up to 240 chars); a hit whose snippet quotes an earlier case carries passage_origin, the case to cite for that language. Query syntax: boolean AND/OR/NOT, "exact phrases", proximity (term1 w/5 term2), wildcards (neglig*), and field filters inside q (name:, judge:, syllabus:). Statute-style numbers like 83.49 are matched as citations to that statute. total may be null: a court or date filter makes the exact count too expensive to compute, and total_pages + total_note then carry the scale. partial: true means the time budget was hit; see partial_note. tier names the backend that served the search: pro = the dedicated index, free/anon = the cloud index behind a short queue.

Find every case that has quoted a phrase. Phrase-matched search over 4.3M distinct passages quoted by two or more opinions, ranked by how many cases quote them. Use it to (a) find the true source of half-remembered language BEFORE attributing it, and (b) locate the canonical wording of a rule. Returns the passage, its source case, and adoption counts. When no passage has the exact phrase it falls back to passages sharing its distinctive words (match_kind relaxed), and it adds the mined propositions later courts cite a case for (match_kind proposition). Same tool as find_authority. Routing: a proposition or quoted language -> find_authority (pasted verbatim); a doctrine name or fact pattern -> find_issues; a party name, statute number or keywords -> search_cases. Quotation marks mean pasted from a tool result (opinion text, passage, best_match). If you typed a quote from memory, run verify_quote and use best_match. Run check_brief on the finished draft and apply its corrections. Copy cite_as for the citation (first page, then pin). The first 3 rows carry star_page and cite_as.

Search statutes, COURT RULES and codes by citation or topic, for EVERY U.S. state plus federal. For a specific state, pass state="wi" (any two-letter code, all 50 states + DC) and a topic or section number; add kind="rule" for that state's court rules or kind="statute" for its code. Without state it searches only the kinds named in kinds (default: Florida). Handles citation lookups ("83.49", "174.02") and topic queries ("dog bite strict liability").

Check one quotation against the full text of the opinion it is attributed to, before it goes in quotation marks. Returns verdict (verbatim | near | absent), percent, best_match (the opinion's own sentence, up to ~600 characters), star_page (the last *page marker before it, null when the text carries none), offset (get_case offset), case and advice. near means the opinion says it in other words: paste best_match instead. absent means the words are not in this opinion. Identify the case by cluster_id or reporter citation (case_name helps a citation newer than the reporter index). Quotation marks mean pasted from a tool result (opinion text, passage, best_match). If you typed a quote from memory, run verify_quote and use best_match. Run check_brief on the finished draft and apply its corrections. Copy cite_as for the citation (first page, then pin).