Editorial standards

How we check what we publish.

RateString’s guides, news, glossary, and tool pages explain California workers’ comp law and the rating math. Attorneys, adjusters, and raters rely on them, so every page is held to the same rules — written down here.

Primary sources only

Every statement of law is checked against the source itself: the Labor Code as the Legislature publishes it, the regulations in Title 8, DWC and WCAB forms, notices, and decisions, the 2005 Rating Schedule, and — for impairment figures — the AMA Guides, Fifth Edition. Law-firm blogs, insurer summaries, and other websites are never a source. Each guide lists the sources it links.

Every number comes from the engine

Ratings and dollar figures are computed with RateString’s rating engine, never worked out by hand — the same engine that reproduces the State’s own published worked examples, live on Check our math.

Checked separately before it’s published

A new guide or news item, or a change to the law in one, gets a separate check before it goes live: each claim is re-derived from its primary source, each figure is re-run, and anything that doesn’t hold up is fixed or cut. Nothing publishes until it passes.

Re-checked across the whole site

On October 19, 2026, every guide, news post, glossary entry, and calculator page was re-checked against primary sources, and every impairment figure against the AMA Guides. Each guide shows the date it was last checked.

Dated, so you know how current it is

Every guide shows when it was published and when its substance last changed. Rate tables are labeled by year of injury, and a new year is added once the DWC publishes it.

Corrections in the open

When something is wrong, we fix it and mark the page updated. A correction that changes a calculation is listed in the changelog, so anyone who relied on an earlier figure can see what changed and when.

Independent

RateString is software, not a law firm. We don’t take referral fees, sell leads, or represent either side, and the guides are written for applicant attorneys, defense, and claims staff alike. Nothing here is legal advice.

RateString is built and maintained by a practicing California workers’-compensation attorney — about RateString. How the engine itself works, including what it deliberately leaves to the physician and the judge, is in the methodology.

Found an error?

Tell us what’s wrong and where — report an error. We check it against the source and fix what doesn’t hold up.