Editorial Policy
A legal claim on this site is only as good as the document behind it, so every guide is built from primary sources and nothing else. This page explains which sources count, how each claim is recorded and dated, how mistakes get fixed, and how advertising is kept apart from the writing.
The primary-source rule
Each rule, deadline, dollar figure, court, office, fee or program detail in a guide must come from the body that makes or runs it:
- Texas statutes are read and linked on the Legislature's own statutes site.
- Court rules come from txcourts.gov, the Texas judicial branch website.
- Federal law comes from govinfo.gov or the electronic Code of Federal Regulations.
- Local procedure (which justice court hears a case, where a county program is housed, what a filing costs) comes from the county, city or court's own site.
- Agency programs come from the agency's own pages, such as the Texas Department of Insurance or the Texas Workforce Commission.
Legal encyclopedias, law firm blogs, lawyer directories and other aggregators are never cited as authority, even when they happen to be right. If a point cannot be traced to a primary source, it is removed from the guide. It is not rephrased with "generally" or "usually" to make it sound safer.
Rules change, which is why the current text matters more than any summary of it. The copy of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure this site checks against is the one txcourts.gov lists as last amended October 1, 2026.
The fact-check ledger
Every factual claim on every page has a row in a fact-check ledger. The row records the page, the claim with its pinpoint citation (the section, subsection or rule number), the address of the source document, the date the source was read, and a verdict. A claim is either verified against the source text or cut. The site's build check fails on any page that has no verified rows, so a guide cannot go live on the strength of memory or an old draft.
Copies of the source documents are kept alongside the ledger, each marked with the exact address it came from and the date it was fetched. When a statute or rule is amended, the stored copy shows what the guide was checked against.
The fact-checked date
Each guide shows the date its facts were last checked against their sources. That date moves only when the ledger rows for the page are re-verified. A spelling fix or a layout change does not reset it. The date is fixed text on the page, not something that updates itself each time the page is loaded.
No lawyer on staff
No attorney writes for the site or signs off on its guides. Accuracy depends on the sourcing method above and on a separate review pass that checks each page against the ledger before it is published. The guides explain what the law provides and how a process works. They do not say what a reader should do in a particular case, and they never estimate what a claim is worth.
Corrections
If you think a guide gets something wrong, email team@drsnorthtexas.org with the page address and, if you can, the statute, rule or official page that shows the error. Every report is checked against the primary source. When the guide is wrong, the text is corrected, the ledger row is updated or cut, and the fact-checked date on the page changes. Reports about broken links and outdated office details are welcome too. The address cannot be used to ask for legal advice; the contact page explains why.
Advertising stays separate
Everything published by DRS North Texas is funded by flat-fee advertising, and the advertising is held apart from the guides in three ways:
- Advertisers never see a guide before it is published and cannot edit, approve or suggest changes to one.
- No guide mentions, links to or favors an advertiser in its text. Paid placements appear only in labelled advertisement spaces.
- Advertisers are not ranked. When more than one shares a space, they are listed alphabetically, and paying does not move anyone up.
The advertising terms cover what a placement can contain and what the site will not do for an advertiser.