How we work
The routine behind a single article, described in the order the steps actually occur.
An article is worth no more than the routine that produced it. Here is ours, step by step.
One article answers one question
Work starts from a question phrased the way somebody would say it aloud, not the way it arrives in a search box. If the library already answers that question somewhere, the existing article gets deepened. Two pages chasing the same thing pull against each other and leave a reader unsure which to believe, so the rule is one question, one page, improved over time.
Reading comes before writing
The sources get gathered and read through before a sentence exists. That order matters more than it sounds: draft first and cite afterward, and you end up with confident prose propped against a source that sits near the point without ever making it.
| Step | What it produces | What gets turned away |
|---|---|---|
| Choosing | A question narrow enough to finish | A subject wide enough to need three articles inside it |
| Reading | Statute, regulation, agency material and decisions, in full | A summary standing in for the text it summarizes |
| Drafting | The question named, answered, then qualified | A settled tone over a point the sources leave open |
| Checking | Each number and section traced home | A rounded figure where the source gives an exact one |
Five references is the minimum and seven the maximum. When five solid ones do not exist, the subject is one this library cannot yet explain honestly, so it stays on the shelf.
Plain sentences, in a helpful order
The question comes first, so within a few seconds you know whether the article is about your situation at all. Then the answer, given straight. Then the qualifications: exceptions, variation between states or circuits, and the situations where the general answer stops working. Headings say what is underneath them, and they are never numbered.
Sentences stay short. A paragraph carries one idea. Nothing is stretched to fill a page, and an article that has finished simply stops.
Numbers and comparisons
These fields run on figures: an investment threshold, days to file a notice of appeal, a ceiling on a relator's share, the reach of a license category. Each figure is given exactly, tied to the text that sets it. Every article carries one table, because a reader takes in routes, forums and categories faster from rows than from sentences. Any table that only echoes the paragraph above it is cut.
Admitting that nobody knows
Unsettled points run through every fields. Circuits disagree over a test. A guidance document is the only statement anyone has issued. A treaty phrase means one thing in one country and something else across a border. A statute drafted for older technology gets stretched over a newer one. Each article says which of those it has run into.
A confident sentence stretched across an open question does more harm than anything else a reference page can hold. It is the one somebody acts on without looking any further.
Two habits avoided
The first is forecasting. Nobody can tell from a general article how an agency or a court will resolve one particular matter, and pretending otherwise misleads faster than a plain mistake would.
The second is the closing lecture. No article finishes by telling you to hire a lawyer. Where representation really does change the result, that belongs in the sentence where the point arises, and the article then carries on with its subject.
What the build throws out
Before anybody reads a draft for sense, a script rejects it for mechanical faults: too few sources, no jurisdiction named, the wrong number of sections, British spelling, a repeated heading id, a picture already used elsewhere, an image without a credit, a word count under the floor, or a date sitting anywhere in the file or its metadata. Internal links must resolve. Every photograph must have alt text.
What no script can do is tell whether a legal statement is true. That is the whole reason the citations print under each article: so this library can be checked instead of trusted.
When an article changes
Three things prompt a rewrite: the rule underneath has moved, a reader has shown that something is wrong, or a passage keeps being read the opposite way round. The change goes into the article, and where the substance moves the article says so. Starting that off is covered at corrections, the promises behind the writing are at editorial standards, and about explains what this publication is.