How a brief is built: rules, not AI

From filing to brief

1. Step 1

   We read the official record, and nothing else.

   Each brief starts from what the legislature, Congress or the agency itself publishes: the bill or rule, its status, its sponsors and its text. News coverage, press releases and social media are never a source, and every link in a brief goes to the official site.

2. Step 2

   The bottom line comes from the record's own fields.

   Chamber, number, title, where it stands and who filed it are laid out in one sentence by fixed rules. Nothing is summarized by a model, so nothing can be invented.

3. Step 3

   "What it does" is in its own words.

   We use the bill's official abstract when there is one, or the purpose clause from its text when there isn't, and say which. We don't paraphrase.

4. Step 4

   Concerns are flagged by rules you can see.

   Our newsroom keeps lists of the words and phrases that mark each industry's concerns, built from years of covering these bills. When a bill is tagged, the brief shows the exact phrase that tagged it and where it appeared: the title, the subjects or the text.

5. Step 5

   Key provisions are found, not guessed.

   Rules look for the clauses a reader checks first: when it takes effect, emergency clauses, private lawsuits, penalties, preemption, size thresholds, sunsets and money. Each one is quoted from the text, so you can find it in the bill.

6. Step 6

   The same bill gives the same brief.

   Because the rules are fixed, the brief is reproducible. If two people at your organization open the same bill, they read the same brief, and so does your lawyer next month.

What you can check

• Every flag names the words that raised it and where they appear.
• Every provision is a quotation you can find in the official text.
• Every link goes to the legislature, Congress, govinfo.gov or regulations.gov.
• Every version of the text we hold is attached to the brief, with its date.

In the sample below, the rules tagged 1 concern and found 4 key provisions in a made-up bill: effective date, private lawsuits, penalties, who it applies to.

Where people come in

The rules are written and tuned by The Needle's newsroom, which tracks the same legislatures for its own reporting. Our team reviews every criterion a subscriber saves. And on Bureau and Desk, a person on our staff reads the week's matches and writes 50 to 100 words on the ones that matter most: the judgment a rule can't make, made by a person and never by a model.

As soon as an hour

Because no model has to run, a brief is ready the moment we detect a filing. We check every source every hour, around the clock, and aim to have the brief in your inbox within an hour. Four hours is our commitment. See what we cover.