How do I cite check my brief?

See if any cases in your (or your opponent's) document have received negative treatment.

Valerie McConnell avatar
Written by Valerie McConnell
Updated over a week ago

To see if any cases cited in your brief have received negative treatment, use the "Cite-check a brief" tool.

  1. On the Casetext homepage, click the "Cite-check a brief" option that appears on the left side of your screen:

2. Clicking that button will take you to a new page, showing a dialog box, where you can drag and drop the icon of your document. In lieu of dragging and dropping your document, you can click on the link that says "choose a document to upload" to upload your document from a folder or drive on your computer. This tool works with PDF files, Word documents, and text (txt) files. 

3. Our system will then generate your "Brief Binder," which will list the cases cited in your document and will use flags to indicate whether any of the cases cited in your document have received negative treatment:

**Please keep in mind when using the "Download Report" feature that currently, you can download up to 30 cited cases per SmartCite report.

If a case cited in your brief has been reversed, overruled, or received other direct negative treatment, that case will be marked with a red flag, as shown below:

If a case cited in your brief has been distinguished by other courts, or cited by other courts using a contrary citation signal (like but see, but cf., and contra), that case will be marked with a yellow flag, as shown below:

If a case cited in your brief relies heavily on another case that has been reversed or overruled, that case will be marked with an orange flag, as shown below:

To learn more about the flag on a case, please visit the case page by clicking on the blue hyperlinked case title. The case page will display a legend beneath the case title that explains the negative treatment your case received and also includes links to the cases that overruled, reversed, or otherwise negatively treated your case:

Additional guidance about Casetext's SmartCite citator can be found here.

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