Pre-launch. Nothing has shipped yet.
PinCite reads a brief, note, seminar paper, or working paper entirely in your browser and flags what’s off under Bluebook rules: malformed reporters, dead id. and supra references, pin cites outside a case’s page range, inconsistent style across a hundred footnotes. Add a token from CourtListener, a free public case-law database, and it opens the exact page a pin cite points to, then drops the quoted passage into the margin as a real comment. That is the source-pull a cite-checker would otherwise do by hand, and it stays off until you turn it on.
Every flag names the rule behind it, so you can decide whether to agree.
41 See Maria T. Alvarez, Algorithmic Sentencing and the Fourth Amendment, 108 Calif. L. Rev. 447, 460 (2020).
44 In re Sealed Case, 989 F. 3d 1, 6 (D.C. Cir. 2021).
RP003 · inconsistent reporter style
“F. 3d” here, “F.3d” at footnote 12. Pick one and use it throughout the piece.
47 In re Sealed Case, 989 F.3d at 9.
Pin cite pulled · p. 9
“…the panel’s holding rested narrowly on the timing of the disclosure, not its scope.”
Who it’s for
PinCite is Silicon Docket’s product built specifically for law students, academics, and journal editors, the people who live in footnotes rather than filings. Silicon Docket’s broader site covers practicing lawyers too.
Cite-checking a full issue.
Flags inconsistent citation form across footnotes written by a dozen different staffers, then pulls the actual page text behind every pin cite. Those are the two things that eat a cite-checker’s week before a print deadline.
A private check before a public one.
Run it before your professor does, or before a write-on panel does, so you see the problems on your own terms first. Catches the Bluebook errors, and the Bluepages/Whitepages mix-up (court style versus footnote style), that a semester of Legal Writing doesn’t always cover cleanly.
Rigor that stays on your machine.
Checks a working paper against Whitepages footnote rules, not litigation form, entirely on your own machine, so tightening citations before submission or SSRN doesn’t cost you the confidentiality blind review depends on.
What we are building
Both are in development. Neither is available today, and we will not describe them as though they were.
Reads a note, article, or brief and reports what is wrong with its citations, rule by rule.
The checker parses the citations in a document and evaluates them against Bluebook form: short-form sequencing, pin cites, reporter abbreviations, court-and-year parentheticals, and section-symbol counts. Each finding is reported with the rule it comes from and the position in the document where it appears. It is a checker, not a citation generator. It does not author authority, and it does not treat a well-formed citation as a verified one.
A Word task pane that reads the document you are already drafting or cite-checking.
The add-in runs beside the open document in Word, reads the text as it stands, and highlights citations where something looks wrong. The pane lists each finding and its proposed fix; you choose which to accept, and only the ones you accept get written into the document. It is built to fit the way you already work: your journal’s template, your seminar’s formatting rules, your own drafting process, instead of moving that work into a separate portal.
A closed-up reporter abbreviation is a legitimate choice under the 21st-edition Bluepages, and a flag everywhere else. You pick the edition and the rule set, Bluepages for a brief or Whitepages for a footnoted article, and PinCite checks the citation against what you picked, and catches a document that mixes both forms.
21st ed. Bluepages · brief or memo
119 S.Ct. 662: closed up, a legitimate choice for a court filing.
20th ed., or Whitepages · footnoted article
119 S. Ct. 662: spaced, per Rule 6.1(a).
For journal editors
Cite-checking a full issue means the same handful of problems, repeated across footnotes written by a dozen different staffers, on a deadline nobody moves.
See every reporter abbreviation and short-form reference used across the whole document at once, and catch the footnote that doesn’t match the other forty-one.
The page behind a pin cite gets read and quoted automatically: the source-pull a senior editor otherwise does by hand, footnote by footnote, before a print deadline.
Spelling and form corrections apply directly; the case, court, or year a citation points to never changes without someone turning that on. A staffer can move fast on the mechanical fixes and still leave the real judgment calls for a senior editor.
Every findings report, JSON, CSV, or Markdown, records the exact build that produced it, so a note about a flagged citation can be traced back to precisely what the tool said and when.
How it works
Write in Word: your journal’s template, your seminar’s formatting requirements, or just your own notes. The add-in sits in the task pane next to the document. A finished note, article, or brief can also be run through the checker on its own.
Citations are identified in the text and classified (full form, short form, id., supra) in the order they appear, so short-form rules are checked against what actually precedes them, footnote by footnote.
Findings are reported with the rule at issue and the location in the document. You can see why the tool thinks something is wrong, which means you can disagree with it. Silent corrections are not the design.
Review each finding and choose which fixes to accept; only the ones you accept get written into the document. Before you rely on it, whether that means submitting a note, publishing an issue, or filing a brief, confirm that each authority exists, says what you cited it for, and remains good law. The tool is a first pass, not the last word.
Commitments
These are design commitments made before launch, not certifications we hold. We have said plainly below which is which.
An unpublished note, a manuscript under blind review, a journal submission under masthead confidentiality: none of it should have to leave your machine to be checked. PinCite runs entirely client-side, so there is nothing server-side to retain in the first place; your documents will not be used to train models and will not be shared with anyone else who uses PinCite. The one opt-in exception, CourtListener, sends only a volume, a reporter, and a page number, never your text.
A citation can be perfectly formatted and refer to nothing at all, or refer to something real that no longer says what it is cited for. PinCite keeps those questions apart: form problems are flagged on their own account, and existence is confirmed only if you turn on CourtListener or supply your own authority list. Whether an authority is still good law is never checked at all.
Findings surface with a proposed fix attached, and a person reviews and accepts each one before it changes the document. Safe, spelling-only corrections can be applied in bulk with one click; anything that would change the case, court, or year stays off unless you turn it on.
PinCite is pre-launch. We hold no security certifications today, have no users to point to, and have no accuracy figures worth publishing. We intend to document our data handling and sub-processors before anyone puts a real manuscript through the product, and to say plainly when any of this changes.
Questions
Yes. PinCite runs entirely client-side, in your browser or as a Word add-in. No server, no upload, nothing transmitted, nothing used to train anything. The one opt-in exception is the CourtListener check, which sends only a volume, a reporter, and a page number to confirm a case exists or pull its pin-cited text; it never sends your prose, your footnotes, or your manuscript itself. That is off by default. The source is public, and the browser itself is configured to refuse a request to anywhere else: see how that is enforced.
It automates the mechanical half. With a CourtListener token, PinCite opens the exact page a pin cite points to and writes the quoted passage into the document as a real comment next to the citation. Whether that passage actually supports the proposition, and whether the case is still good law, is still your call; PinCite checks citation form and confirms existence, not legal substance.
No. It is a checker, not a generator, and it never authors a citation from scratch. It flags problems (malformed reporters, unresolved id./supra, out-of-range pin cites, court-and-year mismatches, inconsistent style across footnotes) and proposes a fix for each one. Safe corrections, the kind that fix spelling and form without changing which case, court, or year is cited, can be applied directly; anything larger stays off unless you turn it on. Nothing is silently rewritten.
No. PinCite is not a citator. It does not check subsequent history or validity, and it is not a substitute for Shepardizing or KeyCite. What it checks is citation form, plus, only if you opt in, whether a cited case exists at all. Existence, not validity.
You choose: two dropdowns pick the edition, 20th through 22nd, and the rule set, Bluepages for a brief or memo, Whitepages for a footnoted article or note. That choice decides, among other things, whether a closed-up reporter abbreviation like S.Ct. is a legitimate spacing choice or a flag, and PinCite still catches a document that mixes both forms.
Billing starts at $8 a month once early access opens. The rest of the pricing structure, including any tiers or institution-specific plans, is not finalized yet, and we will be specific here as soon as it is.
Not yet. PinCite is pre-launch, and the only thing live today is early access: join the waitlist below and you will hear from us when there is something real to test.
Early access
We are pre-launch, and we are starting narrow on purpose: law students, academics, and journal editors. If citation form is part of your work before a filing ever exists, the waitlist gets you a first look when there is something worth your time, and a direct line to tell us where the tool is wrong. Already practicing? Silicon Docket’s broader site covers you too.
Or write to support@silicondocket.com. You will hear from us when the software is ready to be tested, not before.