Methodology and verification policy

What the labels mean

Every rule row and every listing fact carries its source and the day it was read. A listing fact names its evidence: "Checked in the official registry on [date]" (we read the official record ourselves), "Read on the firm's website on [date]" (the firm's own website says it; the firm has not confirmed it to us) or "Stated by the firm on [date]" (the firm told us; we have not checked it in an official record). "Not yet checked", "Unknown — the firm was asked" and "Unknown — not yet researched" mean what they say. If we could not confirm something, it says so — we would rather show a gap than a confident guess.

Primary source means the statute, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, an agency's own page, a court's own opinion, or a state bar's own adopted rule. A law-firm page or a news article is evidence of what that source says, never of what the law is.

How often we re-check

The one question we will not answer

We do not tell anyone whether their state's remedy cures their federal bar.

We publish the test — 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(20), the parallel at 921(a)(33)(B)(ii), and the extra condition ATF adds at 27 CFR 478.11 — and we publish what a state's remedy does under state law, for each state that we have checked. Applying that test to an individual's record is a legal judgement about their facts and about federal case law that this site did not read, and it is precisely what an attorney is for. A site that answered it for all fifty states would be pretending to a certainty the law does not have.

Of the twelve states we sourced in full, not one tells a reader what its own remedy does to their federal bar. Two of them legislate on the federal rule directly — Washington's vacation statute names 27 CFR 478.11, and North Carolina routes a granted order into the NICS index — but neither answers the reader's question.

What we never publish

• Names from Federal Register relief-grant notices. The Department is required by 18 U.S.C. 925(c) and 28 CFR 107.20(c) to publish the names of people granted relief. We do not republish, index, mirror or make them searchable.
• Anything typed into the tier checker. We do not save the answers in our database or use them for analytics. The answers are in the page address, which our web server reads to show the result. A server request log and your browser history can hold that address.
• Scraped data from another directory. Listings come from firms' own public pages and from official state bar lookups.
• A firearm, a firearm part, or any weapon imagery. We sell nothing firearm-related and carry no affiliate links of any kind.

How attorney listings work

Listings are ordered alphabetically. Payment never changes that order, never changes a checked fact, and never changes a check date.

Every attorney is listed free. No attorney pays to appear. We take no fee per enquiry, no fee per client and no share of any fee. We do not send your details to anyone. We do not rank, recommend, endorse or vouch for any attorney. Listings are in alphabetical order. If paid places are added later, each will be labelled 'Sponsored - paid advertisement' and will never change that order.

Where bar standing has been checked, the listing shows "Bar standing checked on [date] - see the official record", linked to the state bar's own public lookup. All other listings say "Bar standing: not yet checked". We do not republish the bar's status text and do not label a lawyer "verified". Illinois lookups are checked by a person only, never by a script.

A fact we took from a firm's own website says "Read on the firm's website on [date]": the firm has not yet confirmed it to us.

We do not use the words best, top, leading, recommended or expert about any attorney, and we do not rank, endorse or vouch for anyone.

Five things we can prove other sites get wrong

Each row quotes the other site and the primary source, both checked on 19 September 2026. We publish this not to criticise but because a reader deserves to know why sites disagree.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did. Every page shows the day it was last checked.

This is a private website, not a government site. The official site is justice.gov/ffrr. Information with sources and check dates — not legal advice, and never a decision about you.