The question is not "is this good law" but "is this proposition usable here, now, for this client."

Verification as taught asks whether a case is good law. That is a question about cases. The attorney's question is about propositions, and a proposition drawn from a live case can be dead, displaced, adverse or already rejected while the case itself shows a green flag.

The proposition-usability model replaces one verification question with four, asked of every load-bearing proposition. Is it still good law, as a proposition rather than as a case? Does it govern in this forum and this procedural posture? Whom does it help? Has it already been offered to a court in this jurisdiction and rejected? None of these concepts is new. Headnote-restricted citator reports, jurisdiction and motion-type filters, case analysis for direction, and opposition research each cover part of the ground. What was missing was the assembly: a single protocol that asks all four, can be taught in one class session, and can be demonstrated against any research product without vendor cooperation.

The model matters more now because generative tools remove friction. A fluent memorandum with real citations to real cases reads like the work of a careful associate, and case-level verification confirms it. The awkwardness that once warned a reader that a passage was being made to do work it did not want to do has been smoothed away.

"Here" is the forum and the stage. "Now" is the proposition's current status, which can change the week a brief is filed. "For this client" is direction, which belongs to holdings rather than cases. A proposition that fails any of the four is not a weaker citation. It is the wrong one.