# Citation-Closure Retrieval and Per-Rule Attribution for Real-World Regulatory Compliance Question Answering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.29742 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29742/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16130/) (2024)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [FActScore: Fine-grained Atomic Evaluation of Factual Precision in Long Form Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14251/) (2023)
- [Qwen3 Embedding: Advancing Text Embedding and Reranking Through Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05176/) (2025)
- [Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10509/) (2022)
- [Enabling Large Language Models to Generate Text with Citations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14627/) (2023)
- [Decomposed Prompting: A Modular Approach for Solving Complex Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02406/) (2022)
- [Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10496/) (2022)
- [NV-Embed: Improved Techniques for Training LLMs as Generalist Embedding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17428/) (2024)
- [Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08921/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09848/) (2023)
- [Natural Language Processing for the Legal Domain: A Survey of Tasks, Datasets, Models, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21306/) (2024)
- [A Statutory Article Retrieval Dataset in French](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11792/) (2021)
- [PIKE-RAG: sPecIalized KnowledgE and Rationale Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11551/) (2025)
- [Complex Societies and the Growth of the Law](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07646/) (2020)
- [Generation-Time vs. Post-hoc Citation: A Holistic Evaluation of LLM Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21557/) (2025)
- [From Generator to Embedder: Harnessing Innate Abilities of Multimodal LLMs via Building Zero-Shot Discriminative Embedding Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00955/) (2025)
- [SustainableQA: A Comprehensive Question Answering Dataset for Corporate Sustainability and EU Taxonomy Reporting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03000/) (2025)
- [Query Decomposition for RAG: Balancing Exploration-Exploitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18633/) (2025)
- [LawThinker: A Deep Research Legal Agent in Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12056/) (2026)
- [MIRe: Enhancing Multimodal Queries Representation via Fusion-Free Modality Interaction for Multimodal Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08334/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Verdict Without the Rule: Diagnosing and Auditing Regulatory Rule Sensitivity in LLM Compliance Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12313/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) for regulatory compliance demands rigorous traceability via comprehensive citations across multi-tiered authority structures. Unlike traditional multi-hop or legal QA, this task requires structured procedural lookups and evidence-set closure rather than entity resolution or case-law reasoning. Existing RAG systems struggle here due to flattened citation edges, fragmented retrieval expansions, and fragile post-hoc attribution. We formalize Regulatory Compliance QA with RegOps-Bench, a novel benchmark featuring an Operational Knowledge Graph derived from complex national R&D regulations. To address these bottlenecks, we propose RefWalk, a unified framework driven by a shared topic anchor. RefWalk traverses cross-document citations, fuses multi-view candidates via max-based aggregation, and enforces per-rule attribution to explicitly map claims to sources. We establish a strong baseline with substantial improvements in retrieval recall and citation accuracy. Finally, a contrastive evaluation on a U.S. health compliance dataset (HIPAA) reveals that existing systems exhibit saturation on flat-structure rules, underscoring the need for RegOps-Bench. Our code is available at https://github.com/yeongjoonJu/RefWalk.