Why the general chatbots are actively dangerous here
A general model asked for authority on a proposition will produce authority. It will have the right shape — a plausible party name, a plausible year, a plausible court — and it will not exist. This has happened to practising lawyers, in filings, in front of judges, with consequences. The reason it happens is structural: the model is completing a pattern, and a citation is a very learnable pattern.
Thaxas cannot do this, because it can only point at documents that are actually in your space. If the case isn't in your reading list, there is nothing for it to cite, and it will say so rather than confecting one. That is a narrower tool, and in this subject narrow is the whole point.
What it's genuinely useful for
- Case notes. Upload the judgment; get the facts, the issue, the holding, the ratio, and the dissent — with paragraph references into the judgment itself.
- Interrogating a long judgment. Ask where the court dealt with a point, and get the paragraph number rather than a summary you have to verify by reading the whole thing.
- Finding the line of authority in your own reading. It searches the cases you have, not the cases it imagines.
- Testing an argument. State your position; it finds what in your reading contradicts it. The objection you're avoiding is usually the one the examiner is looking for. More on the essay assistant.
- Statutes and their amendments, read as documents rather than recalled from memory.