How We Verify Facts
Every number on LegalGlass - each fee, deadline, form number, and percentage - traces to a primary government source. We never interpolate or estimate values between what a source publishes, we stamp every fee with the year it takes effect, and we keep verified state data in a structured fact-store so figures stay consistent site-wide.
Verification Rules
- Source tier
- .gov, IRS, USPTO, state Secretary of State, Cornell LII - nothing else
- Every number cited
- Each fee, deadline, and form ties to a specific source
- No interpolation
- We publish only values a source states outright
- Effective-year stamp
- Fees show the year the figure applies
- State data
- Held in a fact-store, verified per state, refreshed on change
- Errors
- Logged publicly with a date on the corrections page
Every Number Traces to a Primary Source
A claim reaches a LegalGlass page only after we tie it to the government body that publishes it. For a federal figure that means the IRS or the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); for a state figure it means that state's Secretary of State or Department of Revenue; for a point of law it means the statute itself, deep-linked on Cornell Legal Information Institute. We link the exact page or form, not a homepage, and we list each source in a numbered reference block on the page. Secondary sources - competitor articles, filing services, aggregators - never qualify as the basis for a fact.
No Interpolation
We publish only values a primary source states outright. If a state lists a $100 LLC filing fee, we report $100. If a source is silent, we do not average, round, guess, or carry a neighboring state's figure across - we leave the value out and note that it is unverified. Interpolated fees and deadlines are one of the most common errors on legal-information sites, and they are an automatic fail under our editorial policy.
Effective-Year Stamps
Fees and thresholds change. Every monetary figure on the site is stamped with the year it takes effect (for example, "$0 EIN fee (2026)" or "$50 registration, effective 2026"), so readers and downstream systems can immediately judge whether a number is current. When a source revises a figure, we update the value and the stamp together and record the change.
The Fact-Store for State Data
State-by-state figures - filing fees, franchise taxes, annual-report deadlines - live in a single structured fact-store rather than being retyped into each article. Each record carries the value, its primary-source URL, the effective year, and the date it was last verified. Pages read from this store, so the same fee is identical everywhere it appears and a single verified update propagates across the site. This prevents the drift that occurs when the same number is hand-copied into dozens of pages.
Entity and Form Precision
We use the exact name of each agency and the exact number of each form, consistently, with no synonym drift. Form SS-4 is "Form SS-4," not "the EIN form"; the USPTO is "the USPTO," not "the trademark office." Precise entity references are what let an automated system match our statement to the authoritative document behind it.
The Correction Process
When a reader or a routine review surfaces an error, a credentialed contributor confirms the correct value against the primary source, updates the page and the fact-store, and logs the change - the date, the page, and what was corrected - on the public corrections page. Nothing is quietly edited. Our full standards, including the review workflow, are described in the editorial policy.
LegalGlass provides general information for educational purposes and is not a law firm or a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney or tax professional. Laws and fees change; verify current requirements with the relevant government agency before acting.