Startup Idea: Version Control for the US Code

Startup idea to develop a software tool that provides version control for the US code. The tool will be designed to keep track of which statute sections are from which years, and links each section in the US Code to the bills of Congress it came from. This is devised to ease the process of referencing and citing statues in legal briefs or memos.

I work in a large law firm. One thing I need to do a lot is cite statutes in briefs or memos. When citing a specific section of a statute, you need to indicate what year that specific part was published in the US code, so people know it isn't outdated or overwritten by new legislation.

Or, so they can know when it was good law if you're citing an old one for some reason. For example if I wanted to cite a tax law I'd have to say, for example, 26 U.S.C. s. 1001(a) (2012).

Unfortunately different parts of the same statute could all be from different years an there is no indication which parts are from which years, even on WestLaw or LexisNexis. So, to find it, you have to go to HeinOnline and look for the statute(1001(a) for example) in 2017's version(which only has new updates from 2017), then if it's not there, you have to look through 2016, and so on, until you find it.

Then you know which year it was introduced. It seems like a simple thing for software to keep track of which sections are from which years, but there isn't anything currently. Also having a link that shows which bills of Congress each section in the US Code came from would be very helpful.

WestLaw currently will show you a list of all the bills that eventually put lines in a certain large section, but not each individual subsection, so you have to click through each one and ctrl-F until you find the specific subsection's language you're looking for.

So really, some kind of version control for the US code would solve both of these problems as it would show 1) when a piece of the US Code was changed, and 2) which bill changed it.