Editorial Policy

This policy explains how RawLaw decides what to report, how a report is written and checked, who is accountable for it, and how to get something corrected. It applies to everything published at rawlaw.in.

Siddharth Jha, Founder at RawLaw, is responsible for editorial decisions and for corrections.

What we cover

Judgments and reasoned orders of the Supreme Court of India and the High Courts. We prefer decisions that do one of the following:

settle or unsettle a question of statutory interpretation;
state a rule that will govern how a class of matters is decided;
affect how an ordinary person exercises a right — bail, maintenance, tenancy, consumer claims, service conditions, compensation;
resolve a conflict between coordinate benches or High Courts.

We generally do not report procedural directions, adjournments, listing orders, or interim orders that decide nothing, unless the interim order is itself the news.

Sources

Every report is written from the judgment itself, obtained from the court’s own record — its website, its e-copy service, or the certified copy. We do not report a decision from a press release, a social media post, or another publication’s account of it.

We publish the order alongside the report wherever the court permits redistribution, so readers can check our account against the text. Judgments and orders of Indian courts may be reproduced under section 52(1)(q) of the Copyright Act, 1957; where a court restricts publication, or where a matter is subject to a statutory bar on disclosing identities, we follow that restriction.

How a report is written

Reports follow a fixed structure — facts, issues, analysis of the law, conclusion — and identify the court and the judges who decided the matter. We quote the court’s own words for the holding rather than paraphrasing it, and we distinguish between what the court decided and what it observed in passing.

Our use of AI

We use AI to help produce the first draft of a report from the judgment text. It is a drafting tool and nothing more: it does not decide what we cover, and no draft reaches the site unread.

Before a report publishes, a person reads it against the judgment itself — the holding, the provisions construed, the parties, the directions and every figure — and is answerable for it afterwards. Where the draft and the judgment disagree, the judgment governs and the draft is rewritten. Editorial responsibility for every published report rests with Siddharth Jha, Founder at RawLaw, exactly as it would if no such tool were involved.

We disclose this because readers are entitled to know how what they are reading was made. It does not reduce our responsibility for accuracy by any amount, and it is not a reason to take a report on trust: every report links the judgment it describes so you can check it against the source.

Corrections

We correct errors of fact and errors of law, promptly and openly. If you believe a report misstates what a court held, write to rawlaw.in/contact with the report’s URL and the passage of the judgment you are relying on. You do not need to be a party to the matter.

A correction that changes the substance of a report is noted at the foot of the report, with what changed and when. We do not silently rewrite and re-date.
Typographical fixes are made without a note.
Where a decision is later stayed, reversed or overruled, we add a note to the report pointing to the later decision rather than deleting the earlier one.
We aim to respond to correction requests within three working days.

Requests to remove a report because of what a court held, rather than because we reported it inaccurately, are directed to the court. We will act on a takedown where publication is barred by statute or by an order of a court — including matters where the law protects the identity of a party — and on a request from a person whose personal information appears in error.

Independence and advertising

RawLaw earns money from advertising and from the advocate platform at app.rawlaw.in. Neither buys editorial coverage.

No report is written, altered, delayed or withheld at the request of an advertiser, an advocate, a law firm or a litigant.
We do not accept payment to report a judgment, and we do not publish sponsored posts dressed as reports. Any commercial content is labelled as such.
Advertising is placed by an ad network and is visually separated from reporting. We do not choose which advertisers appear, and their appearance is not an endorsement.
We do not rank, rate or compare advocates anywhere on the site, in keeping with Rule 36 of the Bar Council of India Rules.

What our reporting is not

A report is an account of one decision on one set of facts. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for reading the judgment, and it is not a prediction of how another court will decide. Reports state the law as at the date of the decision they describe. Nothing here creates a lawyer–client relationship.

Contact

Corrections and editorial queries — rawlaw.in/contact
Privacy and data requests — privacy@rawlaw.in
Grievance Officer — Siddharth Jha, grievance@rawlaw.in

See also About RawLaw, our Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions.