Reproductive Health Legal Assistance Project: Daily Update Instructions

Patients need care, and clinicians both want and are obligated to serve them. However, post-Dobbs, clinicians are seeking immediate legal guidance before they make decisions about provision of care. With state and local laws changing rapidly, ongoing legal guidance is essential.

Partnering with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) is mobilizing attorneys to provide legal guidance to front-line reproductive health care providers. Clinicians are forced to make heavily-regulated decisions regarding individual patients’ essential health care while trying to be mindful of statutes and cases that are in near-constant flux. They need up-to-date legal guidance that is as clear as possible, to help them understand the shifting landscape in light of the Dobbs decision and multiplying state-level restrictions on abortion and other necessary medical care.

This project will keep current a database tracking the legal environment relating to reproductive healthcare restrictions and protections in every state and territory in the country. The database will be a shared resource, accessible online by approved partners (including law firms participating in this project, reproductive rights organizations, healthcare providers, and others).

Training Materials

All attorneys participating in the daily updates must view the mandatory RHLAP Daily Update Process Training before starting work. The training materials can be accessed here:

IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE YOU VIEW THE TRAINING VIDEO BEFORE STARTING WORK.

Instructions for Participating Attorneys

STEP 1: DETERMINE HOW YOUR TEAM WILL HANDLE DAILY UPDATES

  • Meet with your team, looping in your employer pro bono contact, to decide how you will handle the daily updates.

  • L4GG recommends that each team assign one person per day to submit the team’s updates.

STEP 2: REVIEW CURRENT ANSWER TO Q1

  • You will receive an email from L4GG containing the current answer to Q1 for your assigned state by Friday, January 27, 2023.

  • You will have until February 8, 2023 to research whether the current answer is up-to-date and accurate.

  • As you attest to the accuracy of the answer, please remember that changes can come from many sources, and verify that your research and answer encompasses all of those sources, including: 

    • Changes to existing legislation

    • Promulgation of new legislation

    • Procedural progress in litigation/new rulings or orders 

    • New rule-making 

    • Newly announced orders

    • Constitutional amendments or interpretations

    • Any other relevant legal authority of which you think we should be aware 

  • Please also verify whether any details of the relevant law/legal framework have changed. For example, it is crucial to know whether a state has changed an exception to an abortion ban to an affirmative defense, or whether new reporting requirements have been instated. 

STEP 3: DRAFT ANSWER TO DAILY UPDATE QUESTIONS

  • For your assigned state, review the specific daily updates questions found in this document titled RHLAP Daily Update Questions.

  • For each change you identify during your research, keep track of the following information in your Word document:

    • Bluebook citation

    • Public website URL where the source material can be viewed online (a free site, such as Justia or a state legislative site, rather than a paid subscription site like Westlaw or Lexis) 

    • Source of change (legislative, constitutional, litigation, and/or other legal source)

  • Keep your notes and draft responses to the questions in a Word document

STEP 4: FILL OUT “DAILY UPDATE FORM”

Please DO NOT begin this step until you have completed Steps 1, 2 & 3 above.

  • The first daily update from your team is due by Wednesday, February 8, 2023.

  • When ready (after you have already drafted answers to the questions in your Word document) use this link to fill out the Daily Update Form.  

  • Remember that this form must be filled out even if there are no changes to report.

STEP 5: REVIEW DATABASE AND REPEAT STEPS 1, 2, 3 & 4

  • You will receive access to the database within 7-10 days of your team submitting your first daily update.

  • Once you receive access to the database, someone from your team should review the database and submit the Daily Update Form every non-holiday weekday after that using the above steps.

Tools:

  • Your Westlaw or Lexis account. You will need to use their Keycite or flag tools to ensure the authorities cited remain good law.

  • Casetext.com (publicly available resource of the current version of state codes of each jurisdiction, so that practitioners and advocates can quickly view the state code without a Westlaw or Lexis paywall.  The easiest way to find a code provision in casetext is just to google the state code provision and add “casetext.com” at the end.)

  • Justia (a publicly available resource of older versions of state codes in each jurisdiction, should you need to cite to a provision of the law that is no longer in effect; if it is in effect, please cite to casetext.com)

  • Cornell Legal Information Institute (a publicly available resource of the state regulations)

  • Google Scholar (a free source for case law research)

  • Puerto Rico Code (an English translation of the Puerto Rico code on casetext.com — an English translation is also available on Westlaw)

  • Secondary sources that may help you with this research include: 

  • IMPORTANT NOTE RE: SECONDARY SOURCES: If you use secondary sources for your research, you must independently confirm that any information upon which you are relying is up to date.

Thank you for contributing to this important project. If you have any questions, please email us at probono@L4GG.org.