Guide
How to Build a Legislative Research Workflow
Use LawLinter to search Congress, save repeat searches, favorite important legislative records, organize collections, and bookmark exact bill text passages.
Workflow
- Start with a broad search for a bill number, topic, lawmaker, committee, state, or policy phrase.
- Add filters for record type, Congress, lifecycle status, sponsor state, committee, subject, or affected sector.
- Save the search when it is something you expect to repeat or monitor.
- Save important results as favorites so individual bills, lawmakers, committees, or votes are easy to find later.
- Create a named collection for the research goal and add saved searches, favorites, and text bookmarks to it.
- Open bill text versions and bookmark exact sections or search matches that support the research trail.
Details
Anonymous search is useful for quick lookup. An account is useful when the work needs to continue across sessions.
Collections are intentionally flexible. A collection can hold a saved search, several bills, a lawmaker profile, and exact bill text bookmarks in one place.
Site alerts for saved searches and favorites appear in the account notification center; email alerts are intentionally not part of the MVP.
Questions
Do I need an account to search legislation?
No. Public search works without an account. Accounts add saved searches, favorites, collections, and bill text bookmarks.
What is the difference between a favorite and a collection?
A favorite saves one record. A collection groups multiple saved records, searches, bookmarks, and notes around a research workflow.