FEC to retire legacy Searchable Advisory Opinion System (SAOS)
On August 12, 2025, the FEC will retire the Searchable Advisory Opinion System (SAOS), a legacy search tool on the FEC website designed to search Commission advisory opinions (AOs) and related documents. Researchers and members of the public may continue to search for AO documents by using the current Advisory Opinion Search feature on FEC.gov. This feature provides robust keyword and Boolean search options and a proximity search filter that searches for two terms or phrases that appear within a set distance from one another, in addition to the ability to search for final opinions and related documents by AO number, keyword, requestor name, document type, the date the opinion was issued and more. The Commission also recently debuted a Legal Research Guide to assist users in locating and using all of its online legal resources.