AI Hallucination and Eve's Safeguards

Overview

AI hallucination is when an AI system produces information that reads as plausible but is not supported by the source material. It is a risk on every AI platform, Eve included, and it can affect legal and non-legal facts alike.

Eve is built around the knowledge that this can happen. Rather than asking anyone to trust an answer, Eve attaches the evidence to it: citations point to the document behind a claim, and quote verification checks quoted text against the documents it came from before it reaches you.

A claim with a citation attached takes seconds to confirm. The same claim with nothing behind it takes an afternoon, or never gets checked at all. That difference is what both safeguards are built for.

Citations

Citations are the primary safeguard and the one to reach for first. Values in the case file and claims in a response carry a pointer to where they came from, and clicking it opens the source at the relevant page.

That is the whole skill: hover, click, land on the page, read the line. Two clicks, and it works the same way across the case file, chat responses, medical chronologies, and findings.

Full detail on where citations appear and how the source view behaves is in 📄 Inline Sources.

Three things worth knowing about what a citation proves:

• A citation proves the text is really in that document. It does not prove Eve read it the way you would have. A value that looks surprising is exactly the one to open.

• A field a person corrected carries no document citation. It did not come from a document, it came from a colleague, and that is a better source than a document. Nothing is wrong when the citation is absent there.

• Where a citation lands depends on the source type. A document opens at the cited page. Other sources, including notes and imported case management data, open in their own view.

Quote Verification

Quote verification runs automatically on any quote Eve provides. Before the response reaches you, each quoted passage is checked against the documents in context and marked with a color.

Yellow is not a failure state and it is common with scanned documents, OCR text, and records where formatting has shifted. It is a signal to read the original, not a signal that Eve invented something.

Eve Research

Research answers draw on outside legal sources rather than the documents in a matter, so the check is the same one in a different place: open the source. Every authority Eve Research returns can be opened and read directly, and an answer that matters should never leave the firm on the strength of a case name alone.

For more details, check out 📄 Eve Research Overview

What Verification Does Not Cover

The safeguards check sources. They do not check reasoning, and the difference matters:

• Quote verification confirms quoted text, not conclusions. A correctly quoted passage can still be summarized, characterized, or applied in a way a person would argue with.

• Nothing verifies arithmetic. Totals, date spans, and running balances are worth checking directly.

• Nothing flags an omission. Eve can be accurate about everything it says and silent about a document nobody uploaded. An answer that only reflects what is in context is not the same as a complete answer.

• Checks run against what is in context. A document that was unchecked in matter context, or never added to the matter, cannot be cited, quoted, or verified against.

A Working Review Habit

For anything that leaves the firm, three checks cover most of the exposure:

1. Open citations on any number that drives a decision, such as a damages figure, a lien balance, or a policy limit.

2. Open the source on every yellow quote and on any green quote whose exact wording will appear in a filing.

3. Check the math where figures were totaled or a span of time was calculated.

Everything else is ordinary review of a first draft. The safeguards are what make that review take minutes rather than an afternoon.

Key Terms

• AI hallucination: Information produced by an AI system that reads as plausible but is not supported by the source documents or the factual record.

• Citation: A pointer from a value or a claim to the document it came from, which opens the source at the relevant page.

• Quote verification: The automatic check Eve runs on quoted text, confirming the passage against the documents in context before the response is returned.

• Verification states: The color indicators showing the result of that check. Green is an exact match. Yellow is a partial or approximate match and calls for reading the source.

• Eve Research: Research across outside legal sources, returning authorities that can be opened and read directly.

• Matter context: The documents Eve reads for a given task. Anything excluded from context cannot be cited, quoted, or verified against.