A primary source is the court, agency or regulatory system that generated a record, or a feed that is itself traceable to that system. A vendor summary that has already interpreted a filing is not a primary source.
Sourcing starts at the original record: a docket entry, a filed opinion, a regulatory disposition. The source is captured and retained with the record, not discarded once ingestion is done, because the ability to trace a fact back to the system that produced it is what makes a data base usable for diligence.
Going back to the primary source avoids inheriting someone else's interpretation. A summary layer can mislabel a disposition, merge distinct matters or drop a field, and the error is invisible downstream.
A primary source is not necessarily the most convenient source. It is the one that can be cited, retrieved again and checked.
Working a file that turns on this term?
Working through a diligence process?
Institutional partners evaluating a position against this platform's outcome and duration models are welcome to reach out directly.