The answer to this is that lawyers spend a lot of money paying for “codified” versions of the law, usually compiled by publishers like LexisNexis or Thompson-Re

The answer to this is that lawyers spend a lot of money paying for “codified” versions of the law, usually compiled by publishers like LexisNexis or Thompson-Reuters. And those companies in turn spend a lot of money on their own lawyers and developers to try to compile 51+ different formats of documenting and distributing law and law changes into a format that allows lawyers to not only know what the law is NOW but also often more pertinent, what the law WAS at the moment the issue in question occurred. From my time in that world: A) it’s amazing anyone at all is confident about anything B) it’s amazing how bad the states and feds are at getting this information out in any usable form C) it’s amazing how complex the problem domain is and how many exceptions to exceptions to the rules there are D) if you might go to jail over it, you probably want to be paying a lawyer to look it over