How we work

The method behind every page: how a question gets chosen, how it is researched, and the rules we hold ourselves to when the honest answer is “it depends”.

Choosing the question

An answer starts as a question somebody actually asks, phrased the way they actually ask it. That sounds obvious and it is not how most legal writing works: a great deal of it is organized around the structure of the law rather than the structure of the reader's problem. Somebody whose flight was canceled is not looking for a page on carrier liability regimes. They want to know whether they get their money back.

Each answer has one question at its center and is not allowed to drift. If a second question keeps intruding, that is a sign it deserves its own page.

Researching it

Research runs from the primary source outward. Where a rule is statutory we read the statute; where it is regulatory we read the regulation; where an agency publishes its own plain-language explanation we use that as a check on whether we have understood the text the way the agency does. Secondary commentary is used to find the primary source, never as the authority itself.

Every answer ends with a source list. Those are the pages we actually used, they are all official or authoritative, and they open in a new tab so you can check us without losing your place.

Why every heading is a question

The headings on an answer page are questions because that is how the reader's mind is already organized. It also makes the page honest: a heading phrased as a question has to be answered underneath it, whereas a heading phrased as a noun ("Eligibility considerations") can sit above four paragraphs that never quite say who is eligible.

Because the headings are questions, they double as navigation. On a wide screen they run down the left as a numbered index that follows you as you scroll. On a phone they become a strip of chips above the text. Either way you can see the whole shape of the answer before you commit to reading it, and jump to the part you came for.

Numbers that move

Fees, filing windows, benefit caps, liability limits, exemption amounts, reporting thresholds: these change, often annually, sometimes with no announcement a reader would notice. A site that prints them is wrong within a year and looks authoritative the whole time.

So we mostly do not print them. Where a figure matters, we say which agency sets it and link to the page that publishes the current one. Where a number is genuinely fixed in statute, we state it. Where a fact is true now but has a shelf life, we date it inside the sentence rather than stamping the page.

Federal, state, or both

The single most common mistake in consumer legal writing is stating a national rule for something that is set state by state. Marriage formation, debt collection limits, firearm carry, price gouging, notarization, repossession — all of these differ, sometimes drastically, across state lines.

Every answer says at the top which level of government sets the rule it describes. Where the answer is "the states, and they differ", we describe the pattern and the main variations rather than picking one state and presenting it as the norm.

What we will not do

• We will not invent a statistic. If a number cannot be sourced, we describe the shape of the thing without one.
• We will not invent an author, a reviewer, a credential or an office.
• We will not tell you to "consult an attorney" as a substitute for answering. Where professional help is genuinely the answer, we say what that person would actually do and at what point it becomes worth the cost.
• We will not write anything that helps a reader evade a rule rather than understand it.

Privacy as a design constraint

Search runs entirely inside your browser. The index is a static file this site serves; your query is never transmitted anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to go. There is no analytics script, no advertising pixel, no embedded font from someone else's server, no cookie. Read more on the privacy page, or see the editorial standards for what governs the writing itself.