Methodology

LawLintel is built database-first: facts are stored as structured records — a fee, a limit, a waiting period — each with its jurisdiction, its source and the date it was verified. Pages are generated from those records, so when a fact changes, it changes everywhere at once.

How sources are selected

We use a strict source hierarchy. Tier 1: authoritative government sources — state judiciaries, legislatures and statutes, county clerk fee schedules, uscourts.gov and justice.gov. Tier 2: official or quasi-official institutions, including court-partnered legal-help organizations (e.g., TexasLawHelp, Michigan Legal Help, Illinois Legal Aid Online). Lower tiers are used only when no official source publishes the fact, and are labeled accordingly. Core figures — filing fees, claim limits, statutory thresholds — preferably come from Tier 1.

Official fees vs. estimates

This is our hardest rule: government fees and statutory rules are never mixed with market estimates. A filing fee published by a clerk is shown as an official fee with its source. What an attorney typically charges is an editorial estimate and is labeled as one — in guides, in tables and in calculators. The published surveys and court fee orders behind those market ranges are documented on how we estimate attorney costs.

County variation

Many states set court fees county by county. Where that's true we say so, give the typical statewide range, and name a large county's exact published fee as an example — rather than presenting one county's number as a state-wide truth.

Verification dates

Every fact-bearing page shows when its data was last verified. That date changes only when a human actually re-checks the source — never because the site was redeployed.

How the calculators work

Each calculator is a versioned, rules-based model. Official fees flow from the same verified dataset as the guides; estimate ranges apply published assumptions listed on the calculator page. When a model changes, its version number changes.

Corrections

Fees and rules change on government sites without announcements. When we learn a fact has changed — through re-verification or a reader report via corrections — we update the record and its verification date.