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Articles are arranged by editorial date.
Personal Injury
South Carolina's general personal-injury statute of limitations is three years under SC Code 15-3-530. The biggest trap is the South Carolina Tort Claims Act two-year notice/SOL for government claims under SC Code 15-78. South Carolina applies a modified comparative-fault rule with a 51% bar.
Personal Injury
South Dakota's general personal-injury statute of limitations is three years under SDCL 15-2-14. The traps: South Dakota is one of the last states using a slight-versus-gross negligence rule under SDCL 20-9-2, a 180-day notice requirement under the Public Entity Pool for Liability framework (SDCL 3-21), and a separate medmal SOL under SDCL 15-2-14.1.
Personal Injury
Tennessee's general personal-injury statute of limitations is one year under Tenn. Code Ann. 28-3-104, among the shortest in the nation. Tennessee applies a modified comparative-fault rule with a 50% bar adopted in McIntyre v. Balentine. The Governmental Tort Liability Act sets a one-year SOL for local government claims.
Personal Injury
Texas's general personal-injury statute of limitations is two years from the date of injury under CPRC 16.003. The traps are around it: a six-month notice to a city, county, or state agency under the Texas Tort Claims Act, a 60-day pre-suit notice for medical malpractice with a 10-year statute of repose, and a 51% modified-comparative-fault bar that ends cases if the plaintiff is more than half at fault.
Personal Injury
Utah's general personal-injury statute of limitations is four years under Utah Code 78B-2-307(3). The biggest trap is the Utah Governmental Immunity Act one-year notice requirement under Utah Code 63G-7. Utah applies a modified comparative-fault rule with a 50% bar and no-fault PIP.
Personal Injury
Vermont's general personal-injury statute of limitations is three years under 12 V.S.A. 512. The traps: a six-month notice under the Vermont Tort Claims Act (12 V.S.A. 5601) for state defendants, the modified 51% comparative-negligence bar under 12 V.S.A. 1036, and a $500,000 cap on state tort recoveries.
Personal Injury
Virginia's general personal-injury statute of limitations is two years under Va. Code 8.01-243. The traps: pure contributory negligence (any fault by the plaintiff is a complete bar), a one-year Virginia Tort Claims Act notice under Va. Code 8.01-195.6, and a six-month notice for local-government claims under Va. Code 15.2-209.
Personal Injury
Washington's general personal-injury statute of limitations is three years under RCW 4.16.080. The traps: a 60-day pre-suit claim filing under RCW 4.96 for local government claims, a Chapter 4.92 claim against the State, pure comparative fault under RCW 4.22.005, and a Section 7.70 medmal expert-affidavit framework.
Personal Injury
West Virginia's general personal-injury statute of limitations is two years under W. Va. Code 55-2-12. The biggest trap is the 30-day notice deadline for claims against the State filed with the West Virginia Legislative Claims Commission. West Virginia applies a modified comparative-fault rule with a 50% bar.
Personal Injury
Wisconsin's general personal-injury statute of limitations is three years under Wis. Stat. 893.54. The traps: a 120-day notice of claim under the Wisconsin Municipal and State Tort Acts (Wis. Stat. 893.80 and 893.82), modified comparative fault with a 51% bar under Wis. Stat. 895.045, and a separate medmal SOL with statute of repose under Wis. Stat. 893.55.
Personal Injury
Wyoming's general personal-injury statute of limitations is four years under W.S. 1-3-105. The traps: a one-year written notice under the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act (W.S. 1-39-113), modified comparative fault with a 51% bar under W.S. 1-1-109, and an additional constitutional certificate-of-claim requirement requiring proper presentment to the governmental entity.
Family Law
A divorce attorney bills the first consult by the hour, usually between $300 and $500 for 60 minutes. Showing up with the wrong documents (or no documents) burns most of that hour on questions a tax return and a pay stub would have answered in 30 seconds. Four categories cover what almost every attorney needs to give you real advice: identity and marriage, income, assets and debts, and household and children. The same documents are what your state will require for mandatory financial disclosure later, so collecting them once saves money twice.
Family Law
Most legal-tech products bolt safety on after launch. LawSensai's Family Law Center was built with survivor safety baked into the first click: a quick-exit pill that is always visible, an Esc-Esc-Esc keyboard shortcut, browser-history scrub so the back button does not return to the matter, a safe-mode toggle that hides matter detail from the dashboard, shared-device detection, opt-in attorney communication, and a public Trust Center with a k-anonymity floor of 5. This post walks through what that looks like in production code, not in marketing copy.
Family Law
Temporary orders set the rules a separated family lives under while the divorce or custody case is pending: who has the kids on which nights, who pays what bill, who stays in the house, and who is barred from emptying the joint account. Most are issued within the first 30 to 60 days of filing. They are called temporary, but they usually become the de facto status quo by the time the case ends, so what gets ordered at this hearing matters more than its name suggests.
Business Law
Most consumer-facing AI legal tools generate a document and disappear. LawSensai built Smart Legal Documents so the attorney is part of the product: routing the draft to a real licensed attorney for review, capturing feedback as voice notes plus written comments, running the e-signature inline, and storing the signed PDF in your vault. Here is how the attorney-review surface actually works, from matching through audit log.
Consumer Law
About 70% of consumer debt-collection lawsuits end in a default judgment because the defendant never filed an answer. The cases that get an Answer look completely different. Most credit-card lawsuits are filed by debt buyers who do not have the documents they would need to win at trial: chain-of-title, the original cardholder agreement, a specific bill of sale. Here is the defense most people never file, in five steps.
Business Law
Most contracts cost you money in three predictable places: auto-renewal terms, one-way indemnification, and governing-law clauses tucked into the back pages. None of them are sneaky. They get glossed over because a typical vendor agreement is 14 pages long and the cost of a clause that fires once a year does not feel real until the year has passed. Here is the 90-second triage that catches the three clauses most likely to turn a routine contract into a five-figure problem.
Intellectual Property
"Patent pending" is the most misunderstood phrase in startup pitch decks. It does not mean you have a patent. It does not mean your invention is protected. It means you have filed a placeholder, usually a provisional application at the USPTO, which gives you 12 months to file the real thing. Here is what that 12 months buys you, what it does not, and how to decide whether the conversion to a full patent application is worth the $5,000 to $15,000 it usually costs.
Business Law
The five legal documents that prevent the most small-business problems: an operating agreement, a standard NDA, an independent contractor or employment agreement, a privacy policy + terms of service, and a buy-sell agreement.
Business Law
Most U.S. business attorneys charge $200 to $500 per hour, with a 2026 national median of about $325. Routine flat-fee work runs $300 to $1,500; ongoing retainers $500 to $2,500 per month.
Business Law
An LLC protects your personal assets from business debts and lawsuits; a sole proprietorship does not. For most small businesses, the LLC is the right call from day one.
Business Law
Most operating agreements are template-shallow. Here is what the rulebook for your LLC needs to address before you sign it, ownership, management, transfers, deadlock, and the gaps templates routinely leave open.
Intellectual Property
A 30-minute knockout search will not replace a full clearance search, but it will tell you whether the name you love is already off the table. Here is the workflow we use.
Regulatory Compliance
Twenty states now have comprehensive privacy laws. Here is the working program, notice, rights mechanism, inventory, vendor contracts, security, that gets you 80 percent of the way to compliance everywhere.