Editorial policy

How a fact gets published

Every legal fact follows the same path. A researcher reads the primary source: the statute, regulation, agency rule, or published decision, never a summary of one, and records the citation, the effective date, the canonical link, and the operative language in the site's source register. A second researcher is then given the question and the jurisdiction and nothing else: not the first answer, not the first researcher's notes. They derive the fact again from the primary source. The two derivations are compared line by line.

Agreement publishes the fact. Disagreement sends it to a third pass with both derivations on the table, and a fact still unresolved after that stays "Research pending" and is logged as unresolved rather than split down the middle. Before anything renders, the cited source is re-checked against the currently published official text. This step exists because a citation can stop being right without the law changing at all: an agency renumbers a chapter, a code portal reorganizes, a provision moves, and a link that was correct last year now points at nothing, or at something else.

Until a fact clears that, it reads "Research pending." Being visibly incomplete beats being invisibly wrong. A page whose substantive facts have not cleared is also marked noindex: it is a real address you can read and link, but search engines are not invited to it until it carries verified substance.

To be precise about what this is and is not: this site is not reviewed by an attorney. Two careful readers of primary sources are not a lawyer, and we will not dress them up as one. What an attorney brings, and we do not, is judgment about how case law and agency practice change what a statute appears to say on its face. What we offer instead is that every fact links its source with its effective date, so you can check us, and so can anyone else. If this site ever earns enough to engage a licensed reviewing attorney, that review will be recorded here and named on the pages it covers. It has not happened, and nothing on this site should be read as suggesting it has.

Sources: primary, cited, dated

Claims cite the law itself. Statutes are quoted verbatim in a dedicated block with a linked citation and effective date; process facts cite the administering agency's own materials. Secondary sources (news coverage, firm blogs, other reference sites) are never the basis for a published legal fact. The site maintains a register of every source it draws on, what is taken from it, and the license or legal basis for that use; the register is a repo document and its existence is part of this policy.

Names and dates on every page

Every substantive page shows the state of its facts and the date they were last checked against the primary source, alongside a link to that source. Dates are rendered in a monospace face on purpose: the dates are part of the product. A fact without a date is a defect, and we treat it as one. A verified fact also carries, inside the same stamp, the plain statement that it was checked by this site's research team and not by an attorney. The two halves cannot come apart, because the stamp is generated by one piece of code with no setting for leaving the second half out.

Independence, and the reviewer conflict rules

Editorial content is never for sale. Sponsors and advertisers have no influence over what the reference pages say, which facts publish, or how firms are listed; the advertising policy states what is and is not for sale.

Verification is done by this site's own research team, which makes independence a question about us rather than about an outside reviewer. The rules that answer it: a sponsor is never told which facts are being verified, never sees a fact before it publishes, and never sees the source register. No sponsor's own materials may be a source. If a sponsor's business would be affected by how a fact reads, that changes nothing about how the fact is derived, because the second pass is run without knowledge of the first, let alone of who advertises.

These rules are written to survive the day an attorney is engaged. If that day comes: the reviewer is engaged for a flat fee, cannot be a sponsor, and a sponsor cannot become a reviewer. A reviewer's firm would not appear in the attorney roster of a jurisdiction they review while the engagement is active. No attorney is engaged today.

When the law changes

Legal-change events are triaged by severity. If a change means a published answer is or may now be wrong (coverage, thresholds, deadlines, process), every affected fact is demoted to "Research pending" within two business days of confirming the event, and does not render as an answer again until it has been derived twice against the new text. If only a citation or form number moved, the cite is fixed within a week. Pending legislation and filed litigation go on a watch list. Detection runs on the quarterly recheck, a sweep of each covered state's enacted session laws after adjournment, and reader correction reports.

When facts age

Every jurisdiction is rechecked quarterly against primary sources. A fact whose last-verified date ages past two quarters is demoted to "Research pending" rather than left rendering as an answer; deadline and eligibility facts are exactly the facts that must not be allowed to go quietly stale. The demotion rule is mechanical, not a judgment call.

Corrections

Errors are corrected on the page, with the verified date refreshed and the change described. A credible report that a published answer may be wrong suspends that answer while we re-verify. The corrections and removal policy carries the timelines and the removal rules for people named in source records.

The quarterly quality report

Once a quarter we publish a dataset quality report: how many cells render as answers versus pending, recheck completion, the measured disagreement rate between first and second passes, legal-change events and how fast they were handled, decision-dataset counts and the measured extraction error rate, corrections received and resolved against the stated timelines, and a plain section on what the numbers hide. The pass-disagreement rate is the number that says whether this standard is working, so it publishes whether it flatters us or not. The template is fixed in the repo so the report cannot quietly drop an uncomfortable section.

What we never publish

• Consumer names, addresses, vehicle identification numbers, or narrative allegations from dockets and filings. Decision records carry the docket number, vehicle, defect category, disposition, and source link, nothing more.
• Defect rates or "most lemon-prone" claims. Counts of published proceedings are counts of published proceedings; without a sales denominator they cannot rank reliability, and we say so wherever counts appear.
• Personalized deadline countdowns, anywhere, ever.
• "Free lawyer" claims or blanket statements that the manufacturer pays your attorney; the accurate fee frame is in the disclaimer.
• Unreviewed facts dressed as answers.