Every answer, sourced from UK law
Live retrieval from legislation.gov.uk and BAILII. Click any citation to open the primary source. No hallucinations, no broken links.
AI legal research in Writford. Every answer is sourced, citable and includes a verification disclaimer to keep professional judgment with the solicitor.
How do I check an AI legal citation is real?
Check that the citation resolves to a real source. Writford's citation checking retrieves live from legislation.gov.uk and BAILII, links each citation so you can open the original in one click, and flags lower-confidence citations rather than presenting everything with equal certainty.
- Can I open the original source?
- Yes. Every citation links through to the source on legislation.gov.uk or BAILII, so verification is one click rather than a separate search.
- What happens if the AI is unsure about a citation?
- Lower-confidence citations are flagged rather than hidden. A tool that presents every reference with equal certainty is the one that gets a firm into trouble.
- Does it invent case names?
- Citations come from live retrieval against real sources rather than from the model's memory, which is the difference that matters. Verification remains the solicitor's job.
- Are citations pinpointed?
- Yes, to the provision or passage relied on, rather than to a whole statute or judgment.
- Which UK sources are covered?
- Legislation on legislation.gov.uk, case law on BAILII, and SRA guidance.
Live retrieval from legislation.gov.uk and BAILII
Every research answer is built from real UK primary sources. Writford retrieves the current text of legislation directly from legislation.gov.uk and cited case law from BAILII at the moment you ask. There is no static training cut-off for citations, no invented section numbers, no fabricated case names. If a citation appears in the answer, the source exists and the link works.
- legislation.gov.uk for Acts, statutory instruments and Hansard
- BAILII for case law across all UK jurisdictions
- Live retrieval at question time, not training-time snapshots
- Section-level deep links into UK statute
- Search across English, Welsh, Scottish and NI sources
Open the source in one click
Every citation in a Writford answer is a clickable link to the original document. Open the section of the Act, read the actual judgment on BAILII, see the date the source was last amended. Verifying an answer takes seconds, not a separate Westlaw search. The SRA expects solicitors to verify AI output; Writford makes that the fastest path.
- Inline citation badges next to every claim
- Click to open the cited section in a new tab
- Source date and last-amended date shown for legislation
- Case neutral citation, court and year visible at a glance
- Copy citation in OSCOLA or plain text
Lower-confidence citations are flagged, not hidden
Where Writford is less certain about a citation (older case, partial match, supplemental source) the answer surfaces a lower-confidence flag. The SRA's enforcement strategy treats reliance on unverified AI output as a personal failure of professional judgment; Writford is designed to keep that judgment in the solicitor's hands, with the information needed to exercise it.
- Confidence indicator per citation
- Lower-confidence flags surface in the badge UI
- No silent invention: missing sources are stated as such
- Audit trail of which sources were retrieved per query
- Aligned with SRA Risk Outlook guidance on AI use