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API

Live in beta · v1

LexGrade Verified.
For everyone else's tools.

If you ship a legal-tech product — brief assistant, drafting tool, e-filing integration, compliance dashboard — your users want to know which citations you generated are real. LexGrade's verifier resolves every legal citation against the canonical CourtListener database. Drop it into your stack as a REST API; surface "LexGrade Verified" badges to your users.

Free during MVP, including the API. Same mission as the web UI — access to justice scales when verification is free, not metered.

This API is a commercial implementation of the open LexGrade Standard. The standard itself — criteria, technique register, references — is published and openly governed at lexgrade.org; this service grades and certifies against it.

Quickstart

  1. 1. Create a token. Sign in at api.lexgrade.com, open the user menu, choose "API tokens", name your token, copy it once.
  2. 2. Call POST /v1/verify. Authorization header: Bearer <token>. Body: { "text": "..." }. 
curl -X POST https://api.lexgrade.com/v1/verify \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LEXGRADE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "We rely on Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)."}'

Returns a JSON object with each detected citation classified as Verified, Questioned, Hallucinated, or Unverified. Full endpoint reference: GET /v1/methodology, GET /v1/runs, GET /v1/runs/{id}, POST /v1/verify. Public (no token): GET /v1/standard, GET /v1/standard/criteria, GET /v1/standard/criteria/{id}. Rate limit: 60 requests per minute.

Available today

Citation verifier

POST a document, get a JSON array of every detected citation classified as Verified, Questioned, Hallucinated, or Unverified. Volume/reporter/page triples are resolved against CourtListener; full-text is never sent off-platform.

  • U.S., S. Ct., F., F. Supp., N.Y., A.D., N.Y.S., Misc. reporters
  • 24h response cache per citation triple
  • Bulk endpoint for batch verification

Available today · no token required

Standard API

Pull the open LexGrade Standard (all criteria, all principles, conformance levels, composite formula) as machine-readable JSON. CC-BY-SA 4.0; no account needed. Use it to validate a grading run, build a lint tool, or sync a fork. The canonical, human-readable standard lives at lexgrade.org.

  • GET /v1/standard — overview + HATEOAS links
  • GET /v1/standard/criteria — all criteria
  • GET /v1/standard/criteria/{id} — single criterion (e.g. LGS%203.5)
  • Permissive CORS — callable from any browser without a proxy

On the roadmap

LexGrade Standard & technique scoring

The open LexGrade Standard (scored A–F) and the technique register, available programmatically. Score any draft from your tool against the published methodology; expose tier and per-section feedback to your users.

  • Pluggable court modules and motion-type overlays
  • Calibrated to the same standard your in-house reviewers use
  • Bring-your-own model option for confidentiality-sensitive deployments

Who this is for

Legal-tech vendors

Drafting tools, brief assistants, compliance scanners that need a neutral citation-verification layer.

In-house legal ops

Batch-verify the citations in a backlog of briefs, demand letters, or contracts before filing or sending.

Court technology teams

Flag hallucinated citations at intake. Integrate with e-filing pipelines to surface the problem before the judge sees it.

Early-partner program

Free during MVP for the first 3 integrators

In exchange for attribution ("Verified by LexGrade"), product feedback, and a public case study, the first three legal-tech integrators get unmetered access while we tune the API. Usage-based pricing follows for general availability.

Get a token now → Apply for partnership

The API is open to everyone during beta; the partner program adds attribution placement, integration support, and a public case study.