For councilmembers, supervisors, legislators, and their staff
Know what a bill changes before it moves.
Congress has the Congressional Research Service, while most councils and legislatures have a small staff. Mesa does that research for them and cites every finding to its source.
The work
What your office can hand to Mesa.
Redline a bill against current law
Mesa applies each amendment to the code as it reads today and shows every other section that cross-references the ones it changes.
SECTION 2. Section 12.08.040 is amended to read: “A sidewalk dining permit is valid for [one year] two years from the date of issuance.”
Sec. 12.08.040 Permit term
A sidewalk dining permit is valid for one yeartwo years from the date of issuance.
Sec. 12.08.070 Renewal
Requires annual renewal; now inconsistent
Sec. 3.36.020 Fee schedule
Annual permit fee assumes a one‑year term
Sec. 12.08.110 Revocation
No change needed
Catch problems before a bill moves
Mesa flags conflicts with other laws, stale cross-references, and provisions that reach further than the sponsor intended, each with a suggested fix.
Short-Term Rental Registration Act
0 issuesOrdinance No. ____
An ordinance adding Chapter 5.72 to the Municipal Code, establishing short-term rental registration
Sec. 1. Title.
Sec. 2. Definitions.
(c) “Short-term rental” means any dwelling unit rented for fewer than 30 consecutive nights.
Sec. 3. Registration required.
Sec. 4. Denial and appeal.
(b) An applicant may appeal within 30 days of the notice of denial.
Sec. 5. Operating standards.
Sec. 6. Enforcement.
Violations are subject to the penalties set forth in Sec. 21-5.3.
Sec. 7. Fees.
Sec. 8. Waivers.
The Director may waive any requirement of this chapter for good cause.
Sec. 9. Records.
Sec. 10. Severability.
Sec. 11. Effective date.
See how other jurisdictions handled it
Name the peer cities or states, and Mesa lines up their approaches in one table, with every cell cited to its source.
Understand the operational impact
Mesa traces what a bill asks of the departments that carry it out, from new duties to the deadlines and reports it creates.
Draft the language and the memo
Mesa drafts ordinance or bill language and the research memo for the member, with citations throughout.
Clean up the code
Mesa reads an entire code provision by provision and lists every obsolete or superseded section, with the reason and citation for each.
New York State Assembly
Repealed in the New York State budget.
With Assemblymember Alex Bores, we used Mesa to review New York’s consolidated laws for provisions that were obsolete or open to abuse. Several were repealed in the state budget, including one that let the governor require foreign nationals to register their whereabouts.
Read the Times Union op-edExhaustive search
Title 15, Transportation
Revised Ordinances
0
of 1,284 evaluated
- § 15.08.070ObsoleteHorse-drawn carriages on public streetsSets hitching and speed rules; none licensed since 1952.
- § 15.12.030ObsoleteAccident notice at a telegraph officeRequires notice at a telegraph office; none still operate.
- § 15.24.110ConflictingLoading-zone hours, Downtown districtSets 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; § 15.28.040 says 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- § 15.36.050BurdensomeOversize-load permit filed in personNotarized paper form, filed at the counter; no online option.
- § 15.44.020ObsoletePenalty cites a repealed chapterCites Chapter 15.32, repealed in 2009; nothing to enforce.
“Five years ago, this sort of research would have likely taken years. Mesa processed New York’s entire legal code in an afternoon.”
Alex Bores
New York State Assemblymember · Times Union, October 2025
Honolulu City Council
A Honolulu City Council member is using Mesa to clean up the city’s code, starting with transportation.
How Mesa compares on legal research.
We asked Mesa and four other AI research tools to find every provision in the U.S. Code that defines a federal crime, a task with a known answer. Mesa found 99.8% of them.
Finding every federal criminal provision in the U.S. Code
Recall, best of three runs per system
Mesa
Leading legal AI startup
Claude Research
Gemini Deep Research
Westlaw AI Jurisdictional Surveys
From “What Is the Law? A System for Statutory Research with Large Language Models” (ICAIL 2025). Each system was asked to identify every provision defining a criminal offense in the United States Code. Recall is measured against a validated superset of Count the Code, an independently compiled catalog of about 2,000 federal criminal provisions.
This work runs in Mesa’s Research workspace.
Explore ResearchBring a bill you’re working on.
In a thirty-minute demo, we’ll run it through Mesa with you and walk through what it finds.