OpenAgreements legal reference

Methodology

How we research and verify the content in OpenAgreements practice guides.

Primary sources first

Every claim in an OpenAgreements practice guide is anchored to primary legal authority where possible: statutes, regulations, court opinions, and agency guidance. We lead with the underlying authority, not with secondary commentary about it.

Practitioner commentary, used carefully

We may cite practitioner commentary when it helps explain how a rule is applied, but primary legal authority controls the guide. Commentary is treated as a pointer back to the authority it interprets — not as the authority itself.

Quote verification

Every quoted passage is verified against its original source. Quotes that fail roundtrip verification are removed or rewritten as paraphrase with a citation to the source.

Review cadence

Each practice guide carries a "last reviewed" date visible on the page. Pages are re-reviewed when statutes change, when significant cases are decided, or on a regular interval, whichever comes first.

Review checklists and force labels

Items on a reviewer checklist derive from an RFC 2119-style contract specification, which states how strong each requirement is. Required (MUST) means the agreement is defective without it; Recommended (SHOULD) means there can be valid reasons to depart once the implications are weighed; Optional (MAY) marks a genuine drafting choice; Avoid (SHOULD NOT) and Prohibited (MUST NOT) are the mirror images. Chip color tracks how binding a level is, not which direction it points, and a state overlay can flip a label — the same severability clause can be recommended generally, mandatory in one state, and prohibited in another. Where a checklist item carries a citation it points to primary law or independent commentary; items stating structural drafting practice rather than a legal rule go uncited.

Grounded in real source documents

Market comparisons are built from real documents, not invented examples. Our restrictive-covenant benchmark draws on agreements that companies actually filed with the SEC; privacy-policy comparisons draw on companies' own published policies. Each source document's text is preserved verbatim, and its operative provisions are tagged passage-by-passage against that frozen text, so every observation (say, how many filed non-competes run twelve months) traces back to the exact language of a real document. Comparison tables are compiled from those tagged passages, never written by hand.

Coverage and gaps, stated honestly

Where we do not yet have enough source material behind a claim, the page shows the gap instead of implying completeness — survey rows that are still being researched are labeled pending rather than filled in by guesswork.

Built for machines as well as people

Practice guides, checklists, and law surveys publish machine-readable twins alongside the human pages. Citations carry their authority level in both places: on the page, passages quoting primary law are highlighted differently from commentary, and the page twins label each cited source's authority level in the structured data. Bulk datasets are listed on the data page.

What this is not

OpenAgreements publishes legal research, not legal advice. Reading the site does not create an attorney-client relationship. Always consult a licensed attorney about your specific situation.