How a filing is sealed
Six steps, in the order your team already works. The attorney’s part takes minutes and happens on a phone.
Name the responsible attorney
The statute does not say who is “responsible” when several lawyers sign, or when lead and local counsel both appear. The passport records the firm’s answer before drafting begins.
Everyone who touched the draft signs for their part
Associates, paralegals, contract attorneys, outside vendors and clients each confirm, in about thirty seconds, what they did and which AI tools they used. The court disclosure is computed from those statements, not reconstructed from memory.
Sources are attached
Each citation is paired with the authority itself, drawn from public reporters or uploaded from the firm’s own research service. A citation with no source cannot be signed. Quoted language is matched against the page, word for word.
The responsible attorney verifies each citation
One citation at a time, the sentence from the brief above the passage it relies on. The attorney states aloud what the authority holds. The recording is the record: personal, contemporaneous and privileged.
The final document is sealed
The PDF to be filed is fingerprinted and timestamped by an independent authority, establishing that verification preceded filing. Errata and amended papers receive their own passport, linked to the first.
The certificate accompanies the filing
One page, signed by the attorney through a recognized e-signature provider: the AI disclosure, the verification statement and a code by which the court, opposing counsel or a client can confirm the seal. No privileged content is exposed.
Every hand-off leaves a receipt.
When an order to show cause issues, the first question is who did what. Each person in the chain holds a timestamped receipt of exactly what they passed on, including what they flagged as unverified.
The firm sees where its process held. The individual holds proof of having done their part. Both are protected by the same record.
Hand-off receipt
| Handed over | Associate to responsible attorney |
| Time | Mar 3, 2027, 4:12 PM PT |
| Document fingerprint | 9F3A…C21E |
| Citations prepared | 54 |
| Flagged unverified | 7 |
| AI declared | Research assistant, legal research only |
When the order arrives
California courts tend to order counsel to show cause first and to examine the response closely. Outcomes have turned on the candor and completeness of that response more than on the original error.
- A declaration-ready chronology. For every citation: its origin, who prepared it, who verified it, when, and against which source.
- Corrections that do not compound the problem. Corrected papers pass through the same verification before they are filed.
- An undertaking the court can check. Future filings carry a seal the court can confirm, in place of an assurance it must accept.
Confidentiality and control
- No generative AI touches an unfiled draft. Verification of your drafts is performed by deterministic matching and by your attorneys. Using WritLock adds nothing to your own AI disclosure.
- Drafts remain in the United States. Content is encrypted and stored in a United States region.
- WritLock personnel see counts, not content. The service is built so that our operators work from metadata and cannot open a client document.
- Records are write-once. A sealed record cannot be altered or deleted during its retention period, by the firm or by us.
- It works beside your research tools. Findings from the cite-checking software your firm already licenses appear as advice to the attorney. They never substitute for the attorney’s signature.
See it on a brief your firm has already filed.
Forty-five minutes. You verify five citations yourself, seal the document and export the record a court would ask for. Demonstrations are available from October 23, 2026.
Request a demonstration