Business rules check: one afternoon a year, nine areas

A licensed business can check for rule changes in one afternoon a year, provided it knows which office to open for each area. Pick a date the business already keeps, work down a short list, and write one line per area: nothing, or what changed and when it takes effect.

The check works because rules change on rhythms, and the rhythms are knowable even when the rules are not. Legislatures sit in sessions. Agencies run rulemaking calendars. Courts decide on their own terms. Contracts renew on anniversaries. Knowing which rhythm applies tells you when to look.

What to take away

When each maker changes things

Each maker has a moment worth marking in your diary. The end of a legislative session is the time to check what passed in your areas. The effective date, immediate or months away, is when a new law reaches you.

Legislatures sit in sessions with a start and an end, and bills that pass carry effective dates. A law adopted in one session can therefore bite in the next, so the check records both the session that adopted a change and the date it takes effect.

Agencies make rules under a statute through notice and comment: a proposal, a comment period, a final text and an effective date. They publish agendas and proposals on their own sites and in the official register for their level of government. State procedures follow a recognizably similar arc under their own statutes.

Courts can change what a statute means without a word of it changing. A business cannot watch that layer directly and should not try. It is what professional advisers are for, and it is why a settled rule can become unsettled.

Counterparties change their rules on renewal. Your lease, supplier terms, platform agreements and insurance policy arrive as a revised document you are asked to accept. They bind because you agreed, and they change more often than any statute.

The nine areas and the office to open

One row per area of the business. The point is to record who makes the rules and where you would hear first, because the rules themselves would go stale. Fill the last two columns with the actual office names for your own business.

Several rows already have federal names. Tax rules come from the Internal Revenue Service, wage and hour rules from the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, and workplace safety rules from OSHA. Advertising and consumer rules come from the Federal Trade Commission, and patent and trademark procedure from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Proposed and final federal rules appear in the Federal Register, and the rules in force are compiled in the Code of Federal Regulations. At the state level, entity filings usually sit with the Secretary of State, and licensing with the board or department for each trade. The official registers explain where each federal text is kept.

Build the register once. Name the office for each of the nine areas, find its notice page, and note how it announces change, such as an email list, a register or a bulletin. After that, each year is only the check. A row with no announcement route is one to raise with an adviser.

Running the check

Once a year, on a date the business already keeps, work through these steps in order. The whole job is small because the register is small.

A good line names the office, what changed and the effective date. "Nothing since the last check" is a valid line, and worth writing, because it shows the office was opened. A line that says only "checked", with no date, tells next year's reader nothing.

The compliance calendar holds the counterparty dates. A licensed business that tries to read everything reads nothing, so the register limits reading to the makers that can actually reach you. The business law overview explains why each area carries different weight.

Reading the date line

A citation is an address for a piece of text: a code or register, a title or chapter, a section, and often a subsection. It tells you where the official text lives and nothing about whether the copy in front of you is current.

Go to the official publisher for that level of government and find the section by its number. Then look for the currency marker: a "current through" date on a code site, an effective date on a rule, a session or year on a statute. Compare it to the date your source gave you.

Take one real citation, 31 CFR Part 584 Subpart D. Read left to right: title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 584, subpart D. The eCFR describes itself as a continuously updated online version of the CFR and says it is not an official legal edition.

That warning is a good model for any code site's date line. If the official text is newer than your summary, the summary describes the old version. The same routine applies when a contract or a demand cites a provision, and a counterparty citing it does not mean they have read it correctly. Have your lawyer read it too. The five kinds of text that bind a business are set out separately.

When something has changed

Read the adopted text, not the coverage. Find the effective date and any phased dates, because they decide urgency. Ask the making body's own inquiry route whether the change reaches a business described as yours, and record the answer.

For federal rules, agencies are required to publish notices of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register so that citizens can take part in the decision making. A proposal is therefore a warning, and the adopted text is the thing to act on.

Keep the answer on the register row so that next year's check starts from it. If the making body's inquiry route stays silent, say so on the row and take the question to your adviser.

Then take advice where the change alters what you may do, a contract depends on your position, a deadline is already running, or an individual could carry personal exposure. Licensing changes have their own consequences for approvals already held, which violations and renewals covers.

Common questions

Who should run the check?

Whoever keeps the register, with one other person reading the result. The register names offices, so no legal training is needed to open their pages. A lawyer should read anything that alters what the business may do.

What if an area does not apply to us?

Keep the row and write "does not apply" with the date. A business changes, and an area that was empty last year may matter after a new service or a new kind of contract. The yearly line shows when that happened.

Can one service watch all of this for us?

Aggregated alerts exist and they are keyword filters over public publications. They can be a lead. They do not know your register, and a change that matters to you may never contain your keyword.

How do we know which level of government makes a given rule?

Ask the office you deal with in that area; they know who is above and beside them. Where the answer is unclear, that is the register telling you the area needs an adviser rather than a watch.

Do courts really change rules without anyone telling us?

Yes, and it is the reason an annual conversation with a lawyer or accountant is part of the check. Ask them one question: what has changed in the last year in the areas on our register that we would not have seen ourselves.