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How we source

Methodology

We treat data discipline as the load-bearing trust signal on a legal-information site. Every state record carries a source tier and says whether an attorney has reviewed it (none has yet). None of these are decorative — they are the discipline.

Verification tiers

Every statute citation is tagged with one of four tiers:

  • Tier A — Sourced
    The citation links to the statute text: on the state legislature's site where it publishes the section, otherwise on a public code host, which is not the official text.
  • Tier B — Secondary only
    The citation is as published in multiple law-firm analyses (Pillsbury, Morgan Lewis, Crowell & Moring, Faegre Drinker, Sheppard Mullin, etc.); the primary statute text could not be retrieved, and its verbatim text has not been checked.
  • Tier C — Estimate (annually indexed)
    The value (e.g., Colorado's highly-compensated threshold, Washington's salary cutoff, Maine's 400% federal poverty level) is updated annually by a state agency. We record the most recent year's value with a clear estimate flag.
  • Placeholder
    The state is not yet in the canonical dataset. The decoder returns indeterminate and recommends consulting an attorney rather than guessing. We never fabricate a citation.

Attorney review: not yet reviewed by a qualified person

No employment-law attorney has reviewed the state records. Every state page says so: “Attorney review: Not yet reviewed by a qualified person.” If one does, the page will name them with a real bar number, state of admission, and LinkedIn or firm bio.

Why so strict? Because fabricated reviewers are disqualifying for Google AdSense E-E-A-T compliance, ethically wrong on a legal-help site, and damaging to the audience this site serves: workers in a high-anxiety negotiation moment who cannot afford to be misled.

What we will not do

  • Fabricate a statute citation, a case-law anchor, or a threshold value to fill a row in the matrix. Indeterminate / unverified beats fabricated, every time.
  • Promote a Tier C value to Tier A without re-fetching the primary annual-update page.
  • Show a real attorney's name on a state page they have not actually reviewed.
  • Render dollar amounts on the home page or comparison surface that have not been verified for the current year.

See also