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Q. How do I access your Store online?

A. Go to our website at store.legintent.com or www.legintentstore.com, which discuss the online purchase process, or you can click on "Archives and Research Product" for further discussion. To browse our uploaded archival collection of past research bills and/or to purchase our research materials for your bill, click on "Bill Search or Purchase." Directions for browsing and purchasing are given.

Q. How long does it take to receive the research materials purchased this way?

A. Once payment has been made with your credit card, it should be only a few minutes before you are instructed by email to download the bill documents you have ordered. The time can take from two to ten minutes before you receive your email instructions and link.

Q. What format do you use for posting?

A. Adobe Acrobat Reader's latest version. For your free copy, click here.

Q. When will you have put up ALL of your legislative history materials gathered these last 32+ years?

A. Because the volume of materials numbers in the millions of pages, we estimate the uploading project will take us a few years. For the time being, anyone can search our store to see if their bills are posted already. By the way, given the nature of legislation, once we have posted our collection, new and never-before-researched bills will require us to continue uploading more research materials.

Q. In general, how is this online archives store different from your regular telephone order for custom research?

A. 1) Online Archives ("lisarchives") - At our website's Store (which we call "legintentstore.com around here), you can register and place your orders. The cost is $300.00 per bill, and you get the bill materials immediately. Note that the materials are only on this bill, and that our research is based on our prior compilation and there will be no confirmation of completeness, nor a declaration nor our legislative history and analysis report.

2) Custom research - This is our normal practice over these past 32+ years. Custom research includes our report, declaration, research for materials on relevant failed bills and background documents, and confirmation of completeness of our research. The fees associated with custom research depend upon the number of enactments being ordered and the timeframe in which the client wishes to receive them.

Q. With more specificity, how is this online archives store different from your regular telephone order for custom research?

A. In our custom research, Legislative Intent Service, Inc. provides the legislative history for legislative bills that affected all code sections and charges a research fee for each bill researched. In addition to the number of bills, the time within which to provide this history also affects the research fee.

Online archives research serves the needs of clients who have a specific research focus that does not require complete legislative history. If confirmation of completeness will be necessary, the purchaser can contact us directly, and at the fees noted at legintentstore.com we will determine and obtain, if applicable, any materials that may be available since our original research and upload at our archives site.

The types of materials we collect for custom research include all surviving legislative committees' analyses and their bill files, author's or sponsor's legislative bill files, the Governor's post-enrollment bill file, every amended version of the bill, final history, and any other related legislative committee file that may have been generated on the bill. If the sponsor left behind a legislative bill file or studies on this bill, we also include them, excerpted for your section focus if the materials are voluminous. In our custom research, we include, without additional charge, failed predecessor or competitor bills that sought to affect the section language in the same way as the successful bill. Research of these failed bills provides our clients with useful insight as to the background and development of language of interest to them.

For online archives, it is the client who determines which bill to order. There will be no predecessor or competitor bill included, nor any background materials that might have been included with the custom research. The client can order the failed bill materials at the regular online charges.

For custom research, the materials will include, without additional charge, our objective report on the history of the bill ordered (with a focus on your code section), which is intended to assure the thoroughness of our research, noting sources such as competitor and predecessor bills as well as studies and hearings or model language, and also to serve as a guide to the reader through the legislative history of the bill in question. When there is a section or issue focus, we also try to point to discussions in the materials that may be relevant. For online archives research, if you feel comfortable with legislative history documents, this report may not be necessary and you should simply purchase your bill.

For custom research, we also prepare a declaration that serves as a first step towards authenticating the legislative history materials that we have gathered on the bill. If the online archives researcher decides that a declaration is necessary, the purchaser can contact us directly and we will provide one at the fees noted at legintentstore.com.

Q. Do you recommend I order a confirmation of completeness?

A. It depends on your need for this research. If you are doing a general review and the bill pre-dates the current state governor, there is a good chance that this research is complete and sufficient for your needs. If you are introducing these materials into court as the "complete legislative history" of a particular legislative measure or statute, then you should seriously consider ordering a confirmation of completeness. If you are looking for everything possibly existing on a bill and need to be sure the bill you are researching is complete because of the detail necessary to answer your particular research question, then you should call us to order a confirmation of completeness.

Q. When I am researching the bills affecting my code section, how can I be sure which bill is the correct legislation to purchase at your online archives store?

A. While it is not a perfect resource, a good first starting for legislative research is an annotated statutory codebook. At the end of the statutory language, there will be historical notations of years and chapters (i.e., "1979, c. 314") that indicate there was a bill in that year, enacted as that chapter, which affected your code section. Sometimes, the annotations will include explanations as to each year to help you pinpoint your specific language being affected. This does not always occur, so the researcher must review each of the years/chapters listed to determine what changes were being made for each statute. Once the researcher has "traced" the language of interest to the bill that brought in the language in question, then you can go to legintentstore.com and order that specific bill. If the history noted in the annotated codebooks is too complex or appears too time-consuming to review on your own, we provide a "tracing" service for set fees determined by your deadlines. Furthermore, if you are concerned that the annotated history is incorrect, which we have found in our own experience happens with some frequency, you may wish to simply call us to order custom research instead of ordering online

Q. I utilized the bill search engine and cannot locate the bill(s) that interest me. What do I do next?

A. Over the course of 30 years, we have accrued materials for tens of thousands of bills. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to post all of them online in a short time frame. Simply call us at 800-666-1917, and we can furnish you with the relevant bill materials via net posting, CD, or hardcopy.

Q. Who uses this service?

A. Attorneys, courts, law librarians, paralegals, historians, researchers, lobbyists and reporters, just to name a few. Click here to view what some of our customers have to say about us.

Q. What do you provide that I can't get at California's www.leginfo.ca.gov?

A. There is not a lot on this legislative website. The website currently includes from 1993 forward most of the analyses, every bill version, and a bill history. We provide the remaining Legislative committees' analyses not lodged on that website, all surviving legislative committees' analyses and their legislative bill files, the author's and/or sponsor's legislative bill files, the Governor's post-enrollment bill file, and any other related legislative committee file that may have been generated on the bill. None of these materials are on that website. Also not on that website that we look for are predecessor and competitor bills from which the language of interest to you may have developed, as well as any relevant state agency reports and interim committee reports and studies that may have generated the bill or the section language of interest. Finally, we would be the resource to provide the surviving legislative history materials for all bills predating 1993.

Q. How do I give these documents to the court?

A. You will find the answer here.

Q. Will there be discussion of my section, subdivision, clause, phrase, word, or sentence in the materials?

A. We cannot promise that the Legislature discussed your particular section, subdivision, clause, phrase, word or sentence. Whenever possible, we will in our report point you to discussion in the materials collected regarding your language of interest. We are an objective legal research firm and cannot provide a legal opinion one way or another regarding your research issue. However, even if we are unable to locate specific discussion regarding your language of interest, your own more careful review of the documents may reveal helpful discussion on the issue before you. If not, you should be able to draw some conclusions based upon the assumption that the language of interest to you being added or amended by the bill in question was intended to be consistent with the overall goal of that particular legislation. Whenever you are unable to find specific discussion regarding your research question, the analyses contained in the Legislative Committees' bill files, the Governor's post-enrollment file, and the author's file on the bill may provide you with an arguable assessment of the goals and purpose that you could apply to your particular situation.

Q. Do you do federal research?

A. Yes! Click here for more information.

Q. What download times can I expect?

A. This depends on whether your company uses DSL, cable, ISDN, or dial-up. A broadband connection should enable downloading at 400 pages/minute. Therefore, expect about a 1.5 minute wait for a 500 page document and less than 4 minutes for a 1000 page document. Dial-up customers should anticipate significantly longer times. If this describes your situation, another option is to burn your case onto a CD.

Q. How long will my materials be posted online?

A. Once your order is posted online, you generally have 14 days to download them before the link expires. We encourage you to download your file as soon as possible to avoid this.

Q. What software will I need to view the legislative materials?

A. You will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded for free at Adobe's Website. Be sure to download the version of Acrobat that correlates to your operating system.

Q. I reached the download page, right-clicked to save the document(s) to my computer, and the download will not start? What is wrong?

A. We test each link to ensure that your PDF documents are downloadable. If you encounter problems, it is a strong possibility that your company has filters which prevent the downloading of certain materials. We encourage you to speak with your in-house IT department to see if they can download the files for you.

Q. Why must I download my PDF file before viewing it?

A. In many cases, the PDF documents we create are several hundred pages long. In addition, we may need to scan materials at higher resolutions based on the quality of our copies. Either situation will increase the size of the PDF file. By opening a large electronic document on your own computer, you decrease the odds of your computer crashing. Conversely, opening a large file across the internet may crash your computer.

Q. I made my purchase, logged onto store.legintent.com, and my download link does not work. How do I fix this?

A. For technical assistance in downloading your file, please call our web host, DW Alliance, at 510-903-0644. For questions about your bill materials, please call our office.

Q. Any recommendations for printing my PDF Research?

A: We encourage you to not print your documents as it is so much easier to read the documents online or on your computer screen. With the bookmark function in Adobe Acrobat, all exhibits are linked for easy movement from exhibit to exhibit; and if you received our custom research which includes a Legislative History Report and Analysis, all references to research documents in the Analysis are blue linked for easy movement to the actual document. However, if printing the PDF research is essential, please first determine what version of Adobe Acrobat you have installed on your computer, and then print by checking off the appropriate boxes so that the printed documents will carry the Exhibit numbers. Click here for instructions.

Q. Are Bill and Tom still around?

A. Tom is now head of Legislative Intent Service, Inc. Click here for more information about Tom. Bill retired in 2006 from the firm.

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