When the law changes

What actually changes, and what does not

• Does not changeThe cryptography. A signature, a timestamp and a hash chain do not decay and do not depend on any rule remaining in force. A 2026 record is as verifiable in 2036 as it was on the day it was made, by anyone holding the file, with no account and no call to us.
• Does not changeThe underlying duty. Every instrument on this site is an application of obligations that already existed: do not mislead the court, be competent, supervise those you delegate to, keep confidences. Courts have said so repeatedly. The Fifth Circuit: “the same sanctions rules apply, and the rules we have are well equipped to handle these types of cases.”
• Changes constantlyThe form of the question. Connecticut now asks for a certification at the moment of filing. New South Wales asks an expert to annex their prompts. Qatar can require an affidavit identifying which portions used AI. British Columbia ordered a lawyer to review every other file and report in thirty days.

Those four are different questions. They are all answered by the same four facts.

The four facts that survive every rule so far

Across twenty-four jurisdictions on this site, in six languages and four legal traditions, every instrument we have read reduces to some combination of these:

• 1What ran. Which system or tool was used, and which version.
• 2What it produced. The output, fingerprinted rather than stored.
• 3Who checked. A named human, cryptographically bound to the review.
• 4When. Sealed at the time, not reconstructed afterwards.

This is why we do not build to a rule. A product designed to satisfy Connecticut section 4-9 would have failed New South Wales’s prompt-annexure requirement, which predates it by a year. A product that records those four facts answers both, and answered Qatar before Qatar existed.

The real risk is not retroactivity

New rules rarely reach backwards to punish past conduct. The risk is more mundane and much more common: the question arrives late.

• LateThe Victorian regulator varied a practising certificate in August 2025 over conduct in a 2024 matter.
• LateWhiting reached the Sixth Circuit on appeals filed years earlier.
• LateIn Ko v. Li, counsel was asked in open court who wrote a factum. She had no record. The answer she gave from memory is now the subject of a criminal contempt proceeding.

In none of those cases did the law change. The work was simply examined long after it was done, by someone who was not there, and the practitioner had nothing to show. That is the exposure, and it exists whether or not a single further rule is ever passed.

What we will not claim

• Not complianceWe do not sell compliance with any named rule, and no page on this site says a record makes you compliant. Compliance is a conclusion a court, a regulator or a client reaches. Evidence is what you bring to it.
• Not future-proofIf a rule arrives asking for something we never captured, the record will not contain it. We would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
• Not a substituteA record of verification is not verification. Someone still has to read the case.

What we will claim is narrow and testable: the record is made at the moment of the work rather than compiled afterwards; it is content-free, so it does not create a new disclosure risk; and it is checkable by anyone, free and permanently, without us. Every one of those is demonstrable on the free verifier right now, on a real record.

Related

• Every jurisdiction we track, and when each one changed
• The sanctions record
• Check a real record, free
• The open verifier
• Authorship marks compared

Reviewed 5 August 2026. Information, not legal advice. Nothing on this page is a promise about how any court or regulator will treat any record.

Common questions

If the law changes, is my sealed record still valid?

The record remains cryptographically verifiable indefinitely: the signature, the timestamp and the recorded facts do not decay and do not depend on any rule. What can change is whether the facts you recorded are the facts a new rule asks about. A record proves what it recorded. It cannot retroactively capture something you did not record at the time.

Does a new rule apply to work I did before it existed?

Usually not to the conduct itself, but very often to the question. A regulator or court examining a matter in 2028 will ask what you did in 2026, and will assess it against the professional duties that existed then. The practical problem is not retroactive rules; it is that the question arrives years later and memory does not survive it.

What if I record more than the rule requires?

That is the correct posture, and it is why we do not design to any single rule. Across twenty-four jurisdictions the questions converge on four facts: what tool ran, what it produced, which human reviewed it, and when. A record carrying those four answers rules that did not exist when it was made.

Who is liable if the law changes and the record falls short?

You are, and no vendor can take that from you. What a vendor can honestly offer is a record that is durable, independently verifiable and broad enough to answer questions that have not been asked yet. Any supplier claiming their product guarantees future compliance is making a claim they cannot support.

Do sealed records expire?

No. Verification uses public mathematics and is performed by anyone holding the file, without an account and without contacting us. A record does not stop being checkable if a subscription lapses, if a rule changes, or if the company that made the tool no longer exists.