What should we do if a client sends us AI-generated legal research?

Treat it as an assertion about the law, not as a source of law. Read it, check every case, section and quotation at source before it influences anything you send out, and then tell the client plainly what stood up and what did not. The duty to advise correctly stays with the firm whatever the client has read, produced or paid for elsewhere.

Why the document needs checking, not arguing with

Clients now arrive with research they have produced themselves: a summary of the law, a list of authorities, sometimes a draft letter or a paragraph of statute quoted back at you. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is accurate in the abstract and irrelevant to the facts. Some of it refers to cases, sections or guidance that do not exist, or that exist but say something different.

The practical problem is that all three look identical on the page. Confident prose, a neutral-looking citation and a clean structure tell you nothing about whether the underlying source is real. So the only safe order of work is: verify first, respond second.

That also protects the relationship. If you argue with the document before checking it, you may find yourself disagreeing with something that is right. If you accept it because it reads well, you may end up defending a point that dissolves the first time anyone looks it up.

A short verification routine

For each substantive point in the client's document:

1. Find the primary source yourself: the legislation as it currently stands, the judgment, the official guidance or the decision. Open it, do not rely on a summary of it.
2. Check the quotation word for word. Paraphrases that drift are common and they usually drift in the direction of whatever conclusion the document was heading towards.
3. Check the source is current: whether the provision has been amended, commenced, repealed or replaced, and whether the case has been appealed or distinguished.
4. Check it applies here: the right jurisdiction, the right limitation period, the right regime for the date of the events, the right kind of party.
5. Note anything you cannot find at all. A citation that will not resolve is a finding in itself, and worth recording.

If the document contains no citations, treat it as a list of questions to answer rather than a set of propositions to test. That is often the more useful way to read it anyway.

What to say to the client

Be direct and unembarrassing about it. Most clients are trying to help, to save money, or to arrive better prepared. A defensive response teaches them to stop telling you where their ideas came from, which is the outcome you least want.

Something like this usually works: thank them for it, say you have checked the authorities it relies on, set out which points hold, which do not apply to their facts, and which you could not verify. Where a citation appears not to exist, say so neutrally and explain the risk of relying on it in correspondence or at a hearing.

Two further points are worth making once, early:

• You cannot advise on the basis of research you have not verified, and verification takes time, which is chargeable.
• If they intend to file, serve or send anything containing citations, those citations must be checked. A document put before a court or a tribunal carries obligations, and a fabricated authority in it is a serious problem for whoever put it there.

If the client is a litigant in person in a related matter, or is corresponding directly with the other side, this conversation matters more, not less.

Where the client's document is genuinely useful

It often is. Treated properly, it can:

• Show you what the client is worried about and what outcome they have in mind, which is not always what they said on the telephone.
• Surface a line of argument worth taking seriously, even if the supporting citation is wrong.
• Flag documents or facts they have not yet given you, because the research assumes something you have never seen.
• Save time on scoping: you can tell quickly which issues they consider settled and which they want tested.

It can also change your costs estimate, and you should say so if it does. Reviewing and correcting an outside document is work, and it is fairer to price it openly than to absorb it quietly and resent it.

Keep the file straight

Put the client's document on the file as received, with a short note of what you checked, what you could verify, what you could not, and what you told them. If the point ever matters later, in a complaint, a costs dispute or a negligence allegation, the file should show that the firm's advice rested on the firm's own verification and not on the client's research.

The same discipline applies to research the firm generates with its own tools. The standard is not where the draft came from; it is whether a qualified person checked the sources and is prepared to sign the advice.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis reads official sources at the source: legislation section by section, official guidance, and Financial Ombudsman decisions in full. Every point names its source, and official sources open in one click, which makes checking a client's citation a short job rather than an afternoon. When it cannot find support for a point, it says what is missing instead of guessing, and where coverage is thinner, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, it says so in the answer. It assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.