Legal tech startup BrentWorks reports that it has launched CiteSentinel, a dedicated platform built specifically to detect and prevent AI hallucinations in legal citations, including those related to biotechnology. The tool scans legal documents and flags case law, statutes, and legal authorities that may be fabricated, misstated, or otherwise erroneous, before they reach a judge, according to the company.
Courts across the country are increasingly sanctioning attorneys who submit briefs containing invented case citations, a well-documented byproduct of generative AI drafting tools that produce authoritative-sounding, but entirely fictional, legal authority, says BrentWorks co-founder Brent Britton, a technology attorney and MIT-trained engineer. CiteSentinel was designed to close that verification gap, giving attorneys a fast and easy way to confirm that every citation in a filing corresponds to a real case, a real statute, and a real legal authority, he adds.
“The legal profession is learning, in very public ways, that AI doesn’t just make mistakes, it confidently lies to your face,” continues Britton. “CiteSentinel is about restoring trust. It lets lawyers move fast with the irresistible efficiencies of generative AI while still filing documents reciting authorities they can stand behind. It also enables them to scan opposing counsel’s documents, giving them a competitive edge in the courtroom.”
Many attorneys who do not personally use AI to draft documents are discovering they have a problem anyway, Britton points out. Opposing counsel may have used AI. Co-counsel may have. Contract attorneys and paralegals almost certainly have access to it and may be using it without disclosing that fact. When a brief containing fabricated citations reaches the court, the question of who drafted it quickly becomes secondary to the question of whose name is on it, he explains.
CiteSentinel lets attorneys scan any document, their own, a colleague’s, or an adversary’s, for citation errors before those errors become their problem, notes Britton. Attorneys who review opposing counsel’s filings with CiteSentinel gain an additional advantage: the ability to identify and challenge citations to authorities that simply do not exist, he says.
Unlike traditional research platforms that focus on finding more information, states Britton, CiteSentinel was created to confirm that the law cited in a document is real. Attorneys can scan:
- Their own AI-assisted drafts, before filing
- Submissions from co-counsel, contract attorneys, and support staff
- Opposing counsel’s filings, for strategic advantage
- Any document where citation accuracy carries professional or ethical weight
BrentWorks’ other co-founder is Brent Hunter, a technologist who applied neural networks to finance in 1993. He cites CiteSentinel as the first in a series of products the company will be releasing for the practice of law in the age of AI.
Both BrentWorks’ co-founders agree that AI hallucinations pose particular risks in biotechnology-related legal matters because cases often depend on highly technical evidence, including patent claims, prior art, clinical trial data, FDA regulatory history, scientific publications, expert witness testimony, freedom-to-operate analyses, and licensing agreements. In this context, an AI system could invent scientific references that do not exist, mischaracterize FDA guidance documents, fabricate patent precedents, incorrectly summarize clinical trial results, or generate inaccurate prior-art searches. Such errors can undermine legal arguments, regulatory submissions, and intellectual property strategies.
“Biotech litigation is where AI hallucinations turn genuinely dangerous. You have a system trained to sound authoritative now injecting phantom patent precedents and counterfeit clinical data into documents that determine whether a drug reaches patients or a patent survives challenge,” explains Brent Britton. “In this domain, where the technical record is everything, a ghost FDA guidance document or a fabricated prior art reference can unravel an entire legal strategy and years of work along with it. The law has always been a high-stakes information game, and right now the machines are playing it with synthetic cards.”
As CiteSentinel expands beyond just case citation verification, “it will be the truth layer that keeps all players honest,” he predicts.
