Short answer:
Use an AI assistant to draft queries, summarize authorities, and spot issues—then validate every citation with a citator (KeyCite/Shepard’s), read the source passages, and log your prompts/outputs. This cuts time without sacrificing accuracy or ethics to speed up legal research.
What it is
Generative vs. traditional legal research
Generative AI excels at natural-language questions, summarizing long opinions, and proposing search angles. Traditional platforms remain the authoritative record and provide citators to check “good law.” The safest workflow is hybrid: let AI surface candidates and context, then confirm in primary databases with citators and by reading the text.
Validation with citators
Citators flag negative treatment and history, helping you avoid relying on overruled or distinguished authorities. Use Westlaw’s KeyCite or Lexis’s Shepard’s to validate cases, statutes, and regulations, and to locate splits of authority and citing references. Always inspect the underlying documents before relying on them.
Why it matters
Time savings & coverage
AI quickly canvasses large corpora and proposes lines of attack (elements, defenses, fact patterns). Done well, it reduces hours of first-pass research while preserving rigor by pairing with citators and source review.
Risk & ethics
Ethics bodies stress competence, confidentiality, supervision, and candor when using AI. Never submit unverified AI outputs; courts have sanctioned filings with hallucinated citations. Maintain client confidentiality; disclose AI use when required; and supervise any non-lawyer assistance.
How to speed up legal research?
- Define the issue: jurisdiction, procedural posture, key facts, time window, and desired authority types.
- Pick sources: a primary research database + AI assistant. Note coverage or date limits.
- Query iteratively: start broad in natural language, then refine with elements, terms of art, and controlling statutes/regulations.
- Extract candidates: capture quotes and pin cites; note facts and holdings.
- Validate: run every citation through a citator; read negative treatments and history.
- Cross-check: confirm with a second source; look for splits and very recent developments.
- Draft: produce a short memo section with parentheticals and pinpoint citations.
- Record: log prompts, outputs, and sources; follow ethics guidance on disclosure/supervision.
How to do it with CustomGPT.ai
- Create an agent & ingest sources: Upload case PDFs, rules, and firm memos, or crawl permissible sites/sitemaps. Use File Upload and Website sources.
- Turn on citations (and control how they appear): Enable “Show Citations” so answers include source snippets/links; adjust display in settings.
- Tighten retrieval quality: Enable Highest Relevance (re-ranking) for large corpora and technical queries.
- Choose speed vs. depth: Pick an appropriate model or enable Fast Responses when latency matters; favor deeper models when doing nuanced analysis.
- Expose sources without exposing files (API): When sharing outputs internally, return citation metadata via API while preventing file downloads.
- Scale materials & reindex: Pre-load larger sets via source connectors or API patterns when working with many documents.
- Automate capture & logging (Zapier): Use Zapier actions to start conversations, send messages, or log outputs (e.g., to a doc/CRM).
- Deploy where lawyers work: Embed the agent in SharePoint or connect SharePoint libraries so research stays in-house.
Tip: Keep confidential sources private; restrict agent visibility and enable anti-hallucination in settings.
Example — Title VII retaliation
- Inputs: Employee fired after reporting harassment; federal court in 2024–2025; seeking elements and burden-shifting under Burlington Northern and Nassar.
- AI steps: Ask for elements, common defenses, and recent cases with adverse-action nuances; request a list with quotes and pin cites.
- Validation: Shepardize/KeyCite each suggested case; read any negative treatments; confirm circuit splits.
- Mini-analysis: Draft three paragraphs: elements and burdens, adverse action scope, and causation/timing; include parentheticals and pin cites.
Conclusion
Using AI in legal research is ultimately a tradeoff between speed and the rigor demanded by verification, ethics, and court-ready accuracy.
CustomGPT.ai narrows that gap with citation-enforced answers, high-relevance retrieval, private-source control, and automated logging that keeps research fast without sacrificing validation.
Open your agent, enable Show Citations with Highest Relevance, and test your legal-research workflow on your own documents.