About this site
Who maintains it
Jacob H. Katz, a licensed California attorney.
I litigate civil cases in California state court, and these are the deadlines I calendar in my own matters. That is the whole of the claim: I use this site the way you would.
I own and write calcivilguide.com and calcriminalguide.com as well as this site.
Education
- J.D., University of San Diego School of Law
- B.A. Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Recognition
- National Trial Lawyers, Top 40 Under 40
- Avvo Clients’ Choice Award, 2024 and 2025
- Super Lawyers Rising Star, 2024 and 2025 (selection process)
Published
- “Dealing with Daubert: Finding the Right Balance,” Jury Trial Committee Improvement Newsletter
- “Judicial Problems: Answering Jurors’ Questions,” Jury Trial Committee Improvement Newsletter
What the name does not do
It does not make a date correct. A calculator is right or it is wrong, and my name is not evidence either way.
So do not take the number on faith. Every result here shows its work: the code section, the subdivision, the service extension that was applied, the weekend and holiday roll, and the order they were applied in. The methodology page carries the procedure, the verification date on every individual rule, and the questions where the authority is genuinely unsettled. Where no published decision settles a point, the calculator says so on the result instead of quietly picking one.
That is more checkable than a credential gets you. Assume I am wrong and go read the section. The cite is there to make that take about ninety seconds.
Nothing here is for sale
No ads, no consultation form, no intake, no affiliate links, no paid tier, and no way to hire me through this site. It generates no leads and is not built to. My firm is not named anywhere on it and never will be.
That is a design constraint rather than an oversight, and it is the reason the site can carry my name without becoming an advertisement. It also keeps the incentives honest: a deadline calculator that exists to bring in work is one where you state the rule, skip the part where the authority is unsettled, and stop re-checking once the traffic arrives.
Why it exists
I built the first version for myself, because I was checking the same handful of dates by hand over and over and I did not trust any of the free tools enough to stop. That is still the design brief: every calculator here answers a question I had to answer for a real matter.
The parts that look obsessive are the parts that bit me or nearly did. The backward-count roll direction. The extension that runs the other way on a notice period. Native American Day, which is a court holiday and is on almost no desk calendar.
The rest of what ranks on these queries is either a 300-word blog post restating the rule, or a generic date calculator that has never read the Code of Civil Procedure at all. Neither one tells you what happens when the date is wrong.
How the rules are verified
Each rule value is read against the current statutory text on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov and checked against Westlaw. That covers the period, the triggering event, the unit, and whether a service extension applies. Court holidays are validated against the published Judicial Council calendar rather than derived from statute alone, because the two have disagreed. The last full pass was August 20, 2026.
The full method, the per-rule verification dates, and the questions where the authority is genuinely unsettled are on the methodology page. What the site deliberately does not calculate is listed under scope.
Using this with an AI assistant
The same rules engine is published as a Model Context Protocol server, so Claude, ChatGPT or any other MCP client can compute a California deadline against it rather than from training data. Answers come back with the section, the holiday roll and the verification date attached. It is free, needs no account, and reads no data about you.
Review cadence
A full re-verification pass at least annually, plus a targeted re-check whenever a cited section is amended or a published decision construes one of the open questions. The verification date shown with every calculation indicates how current the values are. If that date is more than a year old, the site says so, and you should check the code directly.
Found an error?
Error reports are treated as the highest priority and are corrected before other work.
errors@calcourtdeadlines.com Please include the calculator, the inputs you entered, the date it produced, and the date you believe is correct with its authority.
What this is not
Not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. It is a calculator maintained by one attorney, not a docketing service, and it does not know your case, your department, or your judge’s standing order. Verify every date against the operative code sections before you calendar it.
Related sites
calcivilguide.com explains California civil procedure for lawyers. Written and owned by Jacob H. Katz. That site explains the rule; this one computes the date.
calcriminalguide.com covers California criminal law for non-lawyers. Also written and owned by Jacob H. Katz, also free.