---
name: legal-citation-management
description: "Citation Vetting Report (CVR) tracking every legal citation through TBV/VERIFIED/FLAG/DROP status — catches hallucinated or mischaracterized AI-generated citations before filing. Use when a person asks to install or apply \"Legal Citation Management System\" (FTR-27) in a project, or when working in a project that has it installed."
---

# Legal Citation Management System (FTR-27, version 1.0)

> Generated from library record FTR-27 version 1.0, publish 20261102a. Review status: unreviewed. The complete specification is in references/spec.md and is the authority; this file is the operating procedure drawn from it.

## What this does

Citation Vetting Report (CVR) tracking every legal citation through TBV/VERIFIED/FLAG/DROP status — catches hallucinated or mischaracterized AI-generated citations before filing

## When to use this skill

- A person asks to install, apply or update "Legal Citation Management System" (FTR-27) in a project.
- A project's agent instructions list legal-citation-management as installed and the task touches what it covers.
- Requires first: FTR-15 (skill project-cache).

## Install procedure

Steps run in order. Assess comes first, every question in the Ask step is answered by the person before anything is written, and every write merges additively into the existing project files (read the file first, update an existing section in place, never overwrite).

### Assess first
- Confirm the project type involves legal citations or authoritative references that need to be traceable to primary sources. This feature is designed for legal proceedings but the same structure applies to any project where cited sources must be independently verifiable — academic, regulatory, or policy work.
- Check for an existing CVR file in the project. If one exists, read it and carry it forward. Do not start a new CVR — merge and version-bump.
- Check the Agent Instructions for any existing citation status summary. If one exists, reconcile it with the CVR.
- Identify the jurisdiction and court. Verification sources that are most complete vary by jurisdiction — state appellate opinions vary widely in free-source coverage; federal circuit opinions are best covered on CourtListener.
- Confirm the project cache is set up (this feature syncs the CVR there on every version bump) — if Project Cache isn't installed yet, note that as a prerequisite rather than skipping the sync step silently.

### Ask, only if needed
- "Does this project already have a Citation Vetting Report? If so, share it and I'll carry it forward. If not, I'll start one now from scratch or from any citations already in your drafts — which would you prefer?"
- "What platform do you have access to for manual verification — Westlaw, LexisNexis, or both? This determines how I label FLAG cases in the pull list."
- "Do you want the pre-filing citation gate enforced automatically on every document conversion, or do you want to run it manually before each filing?"

### Write

The full Write payload is in references/write-payload.md. It is applied exactly as written, with the merge rule above.

### Confirm
Confirm: the Citation Vetting Report is live at `[path]`, all existing citations have been assigned a status, DROP cases have been removed from all drafts, the Westlaw Pull List contains [N] cases requiring manual verification, and the pre-filing citation gate is active. Want to install another feature, or is that everything?

## Other sections in the specification

- Why this exists
- Status taxonomy
- The Citation Vetting Report (CVR)
- How the workflow runs
- Cite-by-docket vs. cite-by-reporter
- Multi-AI research synthesis integration

These are in references/spec.md.

## Files in this skill

- references/spec.md: the complete specification, unabridged.
- references/write-payload.md: the Write step on its own.