About This Site
Last reviewed: August 2026
Who writes it
I am a licensed California attorney. I trained at some of the state's top institutions, I litigate civil cases in California state court, and I have taken and defended the discovery this site is about. I practice mostly in San Diego, with work in Riverside and San Bernardino.
That is as specific as this gets, and the next section explains why.
Why I write this
These are problems I actually run into. When I have to work out whether a supplemental response restarted a clock, whether a 998 offer survives a broad release, or what a separate statement has to reproduce, I do the research anyway, because a case depends on it.
Writing the answer down afterward costs almost nothing, and the answer does not change depending on who needs it. So I am sharing the work instead of letting it sit in a case file.
Every page here started as a question I had to answer for a real matter. That is also why each one says what happens when you get it wrong. That is the part I actually wanted to know.
Why it is anonymous
The short answer is that a name would change what this site is.
Put a byline and a firm on these pages and every sentence acquires a second purpose. The page stops being a reference and starts being a credential. I would start writing the material that makes me look good rather than what a year-one associate actually needs at 9pm, and you would reasonably start reading it that way.
I am also not selling anything. There are no ads on this site, no consultation form, no email capture, no affiliate links, and no way to hire me through it. It is not a funnel. It does not generate a single lead and it is not supposed to.
Anonymity is what keeps that true. A site with my name on it is marketing whether I intend it to be or not.
The obvious objection
You should not trust a legal proposition because of who wrote it. You should trust it because you can check it.
That is a slightly annoying claim to make and it is also the design of this entire site. Every rule here carries a pin cite with its subdivision. Every case gets a full citation and a year. Every page carries a review date, and the Methodology page sets out exactly how citations get verified, how often they get re-checked, and the three specific ways this site can be wrong.
None of that requires you to know my name. All of it lets you check my work in about ninety seconds, which is more than you can do with most of what ranks above this site.
If it helps: assume I am wrong and go read the section. The pin cite is there to make that fast.
What this site is for
There is a specific gap it exists to fill.
The authorities practitioners actually rely on, Rutter and CEB, are excellent and paywalled, and they do not rank. What does rank on a procedure question is firm blog posts, most of them 300 words restating the rule, many written before the amendments and never touched again.
So a competent lawyer with a real question at 9pm gets nothing useful. Not because the answer is hard to find, but because nobody has bothered to write it down properly and keep it current.
The other gap everywhere is the part that actually matters. Every source will tell you what the rule is. Almost none will tell you what happens when you get it wrong, whether it is fixable, and whether any part of it is jurisdictional. That is the question you are really asking, and it is why every page here ends with a section answering it.
Related sites
calcourtdeadlines.com calculates California litigation deadlines with a CCP citation behind every date. Same author. This site explains procedure; that one computes dates. Neither duplicates the other.
calcriminalguide.com covers California criminal law for non-lawyers. Also the same author, also anonymous, also free.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me. I would rather fix it than defend it.