This page explains how DepositLab researches, writes, and maintains its state law guides and tools.
Every legal claim on a state page traces to one of three layers: the state's landlord-tenant statutes (cited on each page), official guidance published by state and city housing authorities or attorneys general, and — for practical context — publications of federal agencies such as HUD. We do not treat blog posts, aggregator sites, or AI-generated summaries as primary sources. Where we cite a statute, the citation appears on the page so you can read the underlying law yourself.
Deposit law changes through legislatures (new caps and deadlines), agencies (annually announced interest rates), and courts (how penalties get applied). We review all 50 state pages on a rolling schedule at least quarterly, and we re-verify a page immediately when a law changes or a reader flags a discrepancy. Each page shows the date it was last reviewed. Numbers flagged on a page as "verify current rate" are ones that change frequently and should be confirmed with the state source linked nearby.
When we get something wrong, we fix the page and say so. Substantive corrections are noted on the page they occurred on. To report an error, email hello@depositlab.com with the state, the claim, and your source; corrections with primary-source backing are usually published within days. A good correction report names three things: the page, the claim as written, and the primary source that contradicts it. We publish the fix even when the mistake was entirely ours — trust compounds faster from admitted errors than from silent edits.
The site is supported by advertising and may earn referral fees from labeled partners in our guides. These relationships do not influence our state-law content: no advertiser sees content early, can change it, or learns about it before publication. We do not accept payment to describe a state's law more favorably to landlords or tenants — the statutes are the statutes. Where a page discusses a company or service, the discussion would be identical if the partnership did not exist.
DepositLab is legal information, not legal advice. Laws interact with facts — dates, notices, lease language, local ordinances — in ways no generic page can weigh. If you have a live dispute, the state resources linked on each page and your local legal aid office are the right next steps; small claims court, not a website, is where deposit cases actually get decided.
We use AI writing tools as drafting aids for explanatory prose, the same way we use spell-checkers. Every legal claim, number, and citation on this site is researched against primary sources and reviewed by the editorial team before publication; no page is published unread. Where our guides describe processes rather than law, AI assistance helps us write clearly at the scale of fifty-plus pages, and our correction policy applies to every sentence regardless of how it was drafted.