Field guide

One dashboard for your full legislative practice

Bills, hearings, votes, analyses, members, and the codes themselves — kept up-to-date and cross-referenced against your portfolio.

Try it first — bill detail demo

Read a bill beside the statutes it touches, whip a committee vote, take a note. No account, nothing saved.

Open the demo →

Your first ten minutes

Search your subject

In Bills, type a number, an author, or the topic in plain English — “wildfire insurance premiums” works as well as “SB 429”.

Track what matters

Select the bills that you follow and Add to list. Mark a position on each: Support, Oppose, or Watch.

Turn on alerts

In Alerts, point an alert at that list. Pick the events you care about and set a cadence — as-it-happens or one daily email.

Map out the session

In Hearings, filter by your lists. CALege reads the daily file and builds your calendar, with hearing materials attached.

Read the bill in one window

Open the bill’s Reader to see analyses, amended versions, and the existing statute side by side.

Bills table searched for electricity with the In committee status facet applied and three bills selected for adding to a list — The bills table, faceted

01 · Build your portfolio

Get every bill you care about into one place

The calendar, alerts, and vote counts all draw from your lists, so build those first.

1Search in plain language. Numbers, authors, and keywords all work — and so does describing the subject. Results rank by meaning when you search a topic, so “tenant protections in wildfire zones” finds bills that never use those words.
2Narrow with the facet rail. Status, house, measure type, current location, introduction dates. Copy link preserves the exact search — paste it in a memo and it reopens live.
3Take a position. Support, Oppose, or Watch on every bill. The list tallies your book of business at the top.

Deeper · Sessions back to 2015–16 are in the session selector. A list exports to CSV for spreadsheets, and a read-only share link hands a client or partner the live list without an account.

Open Bills

Hearings week view for June 29 to July 3 with tracked bills highlighted under third reading and committee agendas across each day — The week, filtered to your lists

Expanded hearing reader showing the Monday August 3 Appropriations agenda with its bill list, and AB 748's committee roster and recorded votes alongside — Open a hearing — its agenda, bills, and where each one stands

02 · Map out the week

The daily file, read for you

Hearings ingests both houses’ daily files every day and cross-references every agenda item against your lists.

1Week to work, Month to plan. Week is the operational view. Month shows the whole cycle — recess, reconvene, and the deadline flags (policy, approps, floor amend, house of origin) on their dates.
2Filter to your list. One click and the calendar only shows hearings that include your bills. The count badge per day tells you how heavy the week is.
3Open the agenda. Every hearing carries its agenda and posted documents inline. Browse bills and hearing materials alongside the agenda for the day.
4Feed your real calendar. Export to calendar issues a private feed URL — subscribe once in Google or Outlook and the hearings stay current.

Deeper · The deadline banner on Home and Bills counts down to the next hard deadline.

Open Hearings

Tracking tab for SB 1087 showing the Assembly Appropriations roster with aye/no/lean vote controls, beside the member panel for Chair Buffy Wicks with her AD-14 district map, contact, and per-bill notes — The whip board — roster, votes, and the member panel

03 · Work a committee

The whole committee, one screen

When a bill is up, the Tracking tab shows the roster, the voting record, and your private vote count.

1See the committee. See the active committee’s roster and its upcoming votes. Signed in, you can log where each member stands — aye, no, or lean — as your own private vote count.
2Check the record. Past votes holds every prior roll call — committee and floor — member by member.
3Follow the member. Click through to any legislator: committees, contact, district map, and the upcoming votes that touch your bills.
4Whip the whole portfolio. A list’s Hearings tab rolls the same picture up across every bill on the list — where each one is, and where the votes stand.

Deeper · Notes you keep on a member (chapter 06) follow them across every bill.

Try it on a live bill → Tracking

Split reader showing SB 1087 bill text on the left and Government Code section 65072.2 on the right, with a banner noting the bill proposes to amend that section — Bill text beside the law it changes

Brief tab code citations for SB 1087 — Amends 16, Adds 1, References 67 — grouped by code with each section tagged AMENDED or ADDED — The citation wall — every section touched, tagged

04 · Read like counsel

What the bill actually does

The Reader puts versions, redlines, staff analyses, and the code sections side by side.

1Open the law beside the bill. Every code citation is a link. Click one and the section opens in a pane next to the bill, with a banner showing its status: enacted and now current law, amended again since, or not yet law.
2Scan the citation wall. The Brief lists every section the bill touches, tagged AMENDED or ADDED — including every section inside a newly added chapter or title, not just the first one.
3Read the analyses in place. Committee staff analyses — background, fiscal effect, arguments, positions — open beside the text they analyze.

Try it on a live bill → Reader

Statute workspace with the Government Code tree open to Title 7 Planning and Land Use, Chapter 2.3 Long-Range Transportation Planning, and section 65070 displayed with its breadcrumb — The statute workspace — tree, breadcrumb, section

05 · Watch the code

When your practice is organized around sections, not bills

The Statute workspace is the California Codes with tools to browse, save, and tag sections — and get an email when a bill touches one you watch.

1Jump to a section. Press ⌘K and type “GOV 65852.21”, or browse the tree when you don’t know the exact number.
2Build a library. Bookmark sections and whole articles; tag them by matter — “ADU”, “brownfield”, a client code. The Saved tab is your library, and it flags any section amended since you saved it.
3Set a watch. Set a watch on a section or a tag: an email whenever a bill proposes to amend, repeal, or add to what you watch.
4Cite a section. Every section has a shareable page for memos, with a copy-link button. The history line links each “(Amended by … )” measure to its bill.

Open Statute

AB 1556 in split view — the Reader with one sentence highlighted on the left, and the Annotations pane on the right listing that mark with its quote, the note written on it, and Edit, Reply and Delete actions — A marked passage, and the pane that collects them

Statute workspace showing Government Code Article 2 with a highlighted passage and a hover card carrying the note on it, beside the Saved rail holding the same annotation under the saved article — The same gesture on statute text

06 · Mark up what you read

The passage, and why it matters — kept together

Highlight a sentence in a bill or a code section and it stays there — with your note on it, in your copy of the text.

1Select, then mark. Select any passage and the bar offers two things: Highlight to just mark it, or ＋ Note to say why. ⌘↵ saves. A bare highlight writes nothing to your record — mark freely on a reading pass and come back for the notes.
2Read your markup back. The Annotations pane lists every mark on the version you’re reading, in document order. Click a quote and the text jumps to that passage — on a ninety-page bill your own marks become the table of contents.
3Mark the code, not just the bill. Save a section or an article and annotate it the same way. Those marks stay with the section, so the next bill that touches it opens onto what you already worked out.
4A mark is a note. Annotations join the same dated record as everything else — tag them to a member or a committee, reply to your own to build a thread as a bill moves, and find them alongside the rest of what you’ve written.

See your annotations

Notes tab for AB 395 showing a dated log of notes — several tagged to legislators and committees — above the composer for adding a new note — A dated log, kept alongside the bill

The Notebook page: a rail listing All notes, Annotations, and every bill, list, statute section, legislator and committee noted, beside the composer and a note on SB 1087 carrying Asm Appropriations and Buffy Wicks tags — The Notebook — everything you wrote, by subject

07 · Keep track of insights

Write it where you are, read it all in one place

Every bill, member, committee, list and saved code section takes a note — and the Notebook is where all of it comes back together.

1Write the note where the work is. Every bill keeps a dated log — what the author’s office said, what you told the client, what changed your position. So does every member, committee, list, and saved code section.
2Tag it to everything it touches. A note filed on a bill can carry the members and committees it involves. A tagged note appears wherever its subject does, and clicking any tag filters to it.
3Read it all in the Notebook. Notebook in the header is the whole record in one place — a rail of every subject you’ve written about, search across everything you wrote, and an Annotations view holding every mark you’ve made in text.
4Let the Activity tab catch you up. One feed per list: everything that happened to the bills, and everything your side did. The orange dot means something happened since you last looked.

Deeper · A list’s own Notes tab still gathers just that list’s bills, for when you want the record on one matter rather than all of it.

Open your Notebook

Alerts page: the create-alert form on the left with scope, event checkboxes, and cadence, beside a table of active alerts across bill, list, committee, and saved-search scopes — Alerts — the create form and every active watch

08 · Get notified

Let alerts do the watching

Every alert is an email with what happened and a link to it. You choose the scope, the events, and the cadence.

1Pick a scope. One bill, an entire list, a committee’s whole docket — or a saved search, which emails you when an amended or brand-new bill matches your query.
2Pick the events. Committee referrals and report-outs, amendments, new analyses, hearing changes, votes and floor motions, enrollment, final result. Check what you’d act on; skip what you wouldn’t.
3Pick the cadence. As-it-happens for the bills you’re actively working; a single daily digest for the rest.
4Set it from anywhere. The alert bell on any bill page and the bells in the statute workspace create the same alerts, one click from where you already are. Manage or pause everything from the table in Alerts.

Open Alerts

09 · Work as a team

One shared book of business

Bring in your colleagues, and your lists, positions, and notes become the team's — one shared view of the session, kept live for everyone.

1Create a team, invite people. From Lists, start a team and bring people in — email an invitation or hand out a join link. You set each person’s role as they arrive.
2Editors write, viewers read. Editors build shared lists, take positions, and write notes; viewers see all of it and change nothing. Change anyone’s role in one click from the team panel.
3Share a list, share the work. A team list shows the same bills and the same positions to everyone. Notes on it carry their author, so the record always says who wrote what and who it’s visible to.
4See new activity as it lands. When a teammate writes on a bill or a list you’re looking at, a new-notes marker appears right where it belongs — and it clears per person, so one colleague reading never hides it from the rest.

Deeper · A team always has an owner. Hand ownership off from the team panel — someone leaving the org never strands the shared work.

Set up a team

Everything here works from a phone. Questions or ideas? Use the Feedback link in the header.