About Us
Know Your State Law is an independent legal-information website that helps people research U.S. state laws in plain English. Rules can vary by state, local jurisdiction, facts, and date.
Browse state laws · Browse legal topics · Use free tools
What Know Your State Law Does
Our goal is to help ordinary readers get a useful starting point when they have a legal question. Instead of assuming that one rule applies everywhere, we organize information by state and legal topic.
Our library covers questions people commonly have about housing, employment, consumer rights, family matters, small claims, property, traffic, civil law, and other state-specific issues. We also build practical tools that can help readers understand numbers or organize questions before doing deeper legal research.
- Browse state laws by state.
- Explore legal topics by subject.
- Use our legal-information tools for preliminary estimates and checks.
- Contact us to report an error, broken link, or useful topic suggestion.
Why State-Specific Legal Information Matters
U.S. law is not one single set of rules. State laws can differ substantially, and local rules can sometimes add another layer. A deadline, filing fee, court limit, landlord-tenant rule, employment requirement, or consumer protection may therefore be different depending on where a person lives or where an event happened.
That is why our content is designed around the jurisdiction whenever the subject requires it. We want a reader to be able to answer a basic question first: Which law should I actually be researching?
How We Research Legal Information
We aim to use authoritative sources appropriate to each topic. Depending on the subject, that can include statutes, regulations, court materials, official state agencies, government resources, and other reliable legal sources.
For federal court and federal-government research, readers may also find the U.S. Courts and USA.gov state and local government directory useful starting points. These are external resources; our articles explain topics but do not replace the underlying official source.
Laws change. Court decisions can affect how statutes are interpreted, agencies can update procedures, and local rules can differ from statewide rules. For an important or time-sensitive issue, readers should verify the current rule with the appropriate official source.
How We Explain the Law
Legal language can be difficult to read when you have no legal background. Our approach is to keep the explanation accurate without making it unnecessarily complicated.
Where useful, we use short paragraphs, headings, examples, tables, checklists, and step-by-step explanations. We also try to answer the next practical question a reader is likely to have instead of stopping after a definition.
Plain English does not mean leaving out important qualifications. If an exception, deadline, jurisdictional issue, or uncertainty matters, we would rather explain it clearly than make the answer sound simpler than the law really is.
What Our Website Does Not Provide
Know Your State Law provides general educational and informational content. We are not a law firm, and the website does not provide individualized legal advice or legal representation.
Reading an article, using a calculator, or contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need advice about your particular facts, a court deadline, a serious dispute, or another matter where the consequences are significant, consider speaking with a qualified attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.
How You Can Help Us Improve
A legal-information website is more useful when readers can identify outdated information or missing topics. If you find something that appears incorrect, please send us the page URL and, when possible, the current official source that supports the correction.
You can also suggest questions that would make our state-law library more useful. Visit our Contact Us page to send feedback.
Start Your Legal Research
| What you need | Where to start |
|---|---|
| Information for a particular state | State Laws |
| A subject such as housing or employment | Legal Topics |
| A calculation or preliminary estimate | Legal Tools |
| Website feedback or a correction | Contact Us |
| Important limitations of our content | Legal Disclaimer |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Know Your State Law a law firm?
No. Know Your State Law provides general legal information and research resources. It does not provide individualized legal representation or legal advice.
Why do you organize information by state?
Many legal rules depend on state or local jurisdiction. Organizing information by state helps readers start with the law that is more likely to apply.
Can I rely on an article for my specific case?
Use an article as a research starting point. Verify important details with current official sources and consider qualified legal advice when the situation is serious or fact-specific.
Our Simple Goal
Our goal is straightforward: make legal information easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to verify. We want Know Your State Law to be a useful starting point for research—not a substitute for the official law or personalized legal advice.