---
title: "Verify legal citations"
method: POST
path: "/legal/v1/verify"
tags: ["Legal"]
---

# Verify legal citations

`POST /legal/v1/verify`

Validates legal citations against authoritative case law sources (CourtListener database of ~10M cases). Returns verification status and case metadata for each citation found in the input text. Accepts either a single citation or a full text block containing multiple citations.

## Request body

- object
  - `text` string, required — Text containing citations to verify. Can be a single citation (e.g., "531 U.S. 98") or a full document with multiple citations.

## Response `200`

Citations verified successfully

- object
  - `summary` object
    - `total` integer — Total citations found
    - `verified` integer — Citations verified against real cases
    - `notFound` integer — Citations not found in database
    - `multipleMatches` integer — Citations with multiple possible matches
  - `citations` object[]
    - `original` string — Original citation as found in text
    - `span` object
      - `start` integer
      - `end` integer
    - `status` 'verified' | 'not_found' | 'multiple_matches'
    - `verificationSource` 'courtlistener' | 'heuristic' — Source of verification result (heuristic for fallback matches).
    - `confidence` number — Confidence score (1.0 for CourtListener, heuristic score for fallback).
    - `normalized` string — Normalized citation string
    - `case` object — Case metadata (when verified)
      - `id` integer
      - `name` string
      - `shortName` string
      - `court` string
      - `dateDecided` string
      - `docketNumber` string
      - `parallelCitations` string[]
      - `url` string
    - `candidates` object[] — Multiple candidates (when multiple_matches or heuristic verification)
      - `name` string
      - `court` string
      - `dateDecided` string
      - `url` string

## Other responses

- `400` — Bad request - invalid or missing text parameter
- `401` — Unauthorized - invalid API key
- `503` — Service unavailable - CourtListener API unreachable

---

[API](https://skmtc.net/casemark/apis/case-dev-api.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.net/casemark/apis/case-dev-api/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-staging.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/casemark/case-dev-api/versions/5b7e64e6d6f9/schema)