How we report

Every report follows the same method. It is written down here so a reader can judge the process, not just the output.

One report, one question

Before anything is written, the question is stated in a single line — the thing a reader would type if they knew the vocabulary. If that line matches a report we already publish, we update the existing report instead of publishing a second one that competes with it. This is why the archive has no near-duplicates: a subject gets one page, and that page gets better over time.

Building the source set first

Sources come before prose. For a federal procedure that means the controlling statute, the regulation implementing it, and the agency page that tells the public how to comply. For a subject that varies by state, it means the uniform act or model rule where one exists, two or three state statutes that show the range, and the agency material that shows how it works in practice.

A report is not written until that set exists. If the set cannot be built — because the rule is genuinely unsettled or because the only available material is secondary — the report is not published.

Writing from the reader's position

Each report opens with what it covers, then answers in the order a person actually needs: what the rule is, who it applies to, what the procedure is, what the deadlines are, and what happens when it goes wrong. Sections are questions where a question is what the reader has.

Two things are deliberately excluded: predictions about how a case would come out, and any suggestion about whether to hire a lawyer for a particular matter. We describe the moments where professional help is usually decisive, and leave the decision where it belongs.

Separating what is fixed from what varies

Every factual claim gets sorted into one of three buckets: federal and uniform, federal with state variation, or state law with no federal floor. The jurisdiction label at the top of the report reflects the dominant bucket, and inside the text each claim is framed accordingly. Dollar figures, thresholds and fee amounts are treated as volatile: the report says where the current figure is published rather than freezing a number that will be wrong within a year.

Checking before publication

Each report is checked mechanically before it goes out. The build refuses a report that is missing its source list, that carries fewer than four sections, that repeats another report's headline or opening, that reuses a photograph, or that contains a publication date. Links are resolved, images are checked for alt text, and the whole archive is compared against itself for overlapping subjects.

What no automated check can test is whether a legal claim is true. That rests on the sources listed at the foot of every report, which is why they are printed in full rather than hidden behind a footnote.

Updating

Reports are revised when the underlying rule changes, when a reader shows us an error, or when we find a gap in the explanation. Substantive corrections are logged on the corrections page.