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Methodology

How we keep this accurate

The detail behind the calm. Our citation hierarchy, the annual update cycle, the reviewer architecture, and the one rule we never break.

Citation hierarchy

We rank sources, and the primary citation always comes from the top tiers:

  • Tier 1 (primary): state-legislature official sites, state-court official reporters, and Cornell LII (for federal statutes and the case archive).
  • Tier 2 (supplementary only): Justia, Nolo, and FindLaw. We use these to cross-check, never as the primary link.

The no-fabrication rule

This is the load-bearing rule for a YMYL legal vertical. Case-law citations are either backed by a primary source you can click, or marked honestly as “pending verification.” We never invent a case name or a parallel citation. When our research cannot confirm a cite against a primary source, the page shows a “pending” marker — not a guess. AI answer boxes hallucinate citations across fifty jurisdictions; being the verified alternative is the whole point of this site.

Verification status

Wave-1 statute citations are scaffolded from a documented research pass against primary-source pages (marked “research”), and each carries a last-verified date. We label the verification status a page actually has, rather than implying a review that has not happened.

Annual re-verification cycle

Easement law is largely common-law and evolves through court decisions. Every state page carries a last-verified date and is re-verified annually against primary sources. State research ships in waves (Wave 1 = 10 states, Wave 2 = 20, Wave 3 = remaining 21 + DC) specifically to keep the annual update burden tractable.

How the dispute-pathway map reasons

The classifier is plain logic, not a black box. Read exactly how it maps a role + state + detail to a doctrine on the classifier explainer. It logs none of your answers and runs entirely in your browser.

Equal-weight doctrine policy

All seven easement doctrines — express, implied, prescription, necessity, estoppel, conservation, and utility — are rendered with equal procedural depth and equal trust-signal density. Conservation-easement coverage gets the same care as prescription, necessity, or estoppel. None is the default; none is an edge case; all are first-class.