# The Hallucination Firewall

A pre-release verification protocol for AI-assisted legal work. Run it before any document, email, or filing touched by AI leaves your hands.

## Why AI fabricates authority

A large language model does not look anything up. It predicts the next word based on patterns in its training data. It has read millions of citations, so it knows the shape of one: party names, reporter, volume, page, year. When you ask for authority, it produces text in that shape. Sometimes the case exists. Sometimes it does not. The model cannot tell the difference, and its tone is identical either way.

The fabricated case is the famous failure. The quieter one is worse: a real case cited for a holding it never reached, a quotation altered by a few words, a statute described as current when it was amended last term. These pass a quick eyeball check. They do not pass a reporter.

Courts have sanctioned attorneys for filing AI-fabricated citations. Every order says the same thing: the duty to verify belonged to the lawyer.

## The Firewall

Run every step. In order. Before release.

**1. Confirm the work is releasable at all.**
AI output is a draft. It is never filed, sent, or relied on unverified. If you do not have time to run this protocol, you do not have a finished work product.

**2. Pull every cited authority yourself.**
Find each case, statute, and regulation in Westlaw, Lexis, or an official reporter. Not in the AI tool, and not in a search engine summary. AI output is never authority. If you cannot pull it, it does not exist for your purposes — cut it.

**3. Read each case for the stated proposition.**
Confirm the case holds what the draft says it holds. Check holding against dicta. Check which party won. Verify every pin cite points to the right page.

**4. Check every quotation word for word.**
Compare each quoted passage against the source text. AI paraphrases inside quotation marks. Fix or remove anything that does not match exactly.

**5. Run a currency check.**
KeyCite or Shepardize every authority. Confirm nothing has been overruled, superseded, abrogated, or limited. For statutes and rules, confirm you have the version in effect for your matter.

**6. Confirm jurisdiction fit.**
Binding or persuasive for this court? Right state's law? Right circuit? AI blends jurisdictions without flagging it.

**7. Audit what you pasted in.**
Review your prompts. If they contained client information, confirm one of two things: you removed client-identifying details first, or your AI tool sits under your firm's confidentiality terms and your bar's guidance before any client data went in. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) treats this as a Rule 1.6 issue. A consumer chatbot account is not a confidential channel.

**8. Check disclosure obligations.**
Opinion 512 covers competence, confidentiality, client communication, candor, supervision, and fees. Check the court's standing orders and local rules — some judges require certification of AI use. Decide whether your client should be told, and whether your fee reflects the time the tool saved.

**9. Final read, cold.**
Read the document as if opposing counsel wrote it and you are looking for the error. Your signature goes on it. Rule 11 and its state analogs do not have an AI exception.

## Red flags

Patterns that signal fabrication. Any one of these means stop and verify before anything else.

- A citation you cannot find within a minute in Westlaw or Lexis.
- A case perfectly on point for an unusual fact pattern. Real research rarely lands that clean.
- Generic party names: Smith v. Jones, Johnson v. State.
- A reporter volume or year that looks off for the court named.
- Quotations with no pin cite, or pin cites to pages the case does not have.
- The same case cited for two different propositions in one document.
- A string cite where every authority favors you. Honest research has friction.
- Confident summaries of a case's procedural history with no docket details.

## The line that does not move

The tool drafted it. You signed it. The duty of candor, the duty of competence, and the malpractice exposure stay with you — that is the position of Opinion 512, of every sanctions order on record, and of your bar. The firewall is not extra caution. It is the same verification you owed before AI existed, written down so nothing skips it.

Print this. Tape it next to your monitor. Run it every time.

Part of The Solo Attorney's AI Practice Library — vetslearn.com/libraries/attorney