- Building on related work
- What would the imaginary tool do?
- Some examples of what the tool could do (as descriptions, but eventually as demos)
We have an interactive mock-up of some of the functions of an imaginary tool for legislative drafters - please try it out.
It is a work in progress and we will add separate videos to illustrate further functions -
- For now we have notes on our OSF site about the idea of expanding the defined terms hyperlinks to cover undefined repeated terms (which should have the same meaning).
- We also have a PowerPoint showing how the tool in the mock-up might look if it handled those repeated undefined terms,
- Another PowerPoint shows how it might look if it handled marking up “must” and “must not” provisions to higlight their elements and link to the consequence of a breach.
We want to show legislative drafters how a possible tool could work to help them create, mark up and check the logical structures in their drafts while they are drafting.
- We aim to do that by producing illustrative mock-ups, plus a basic specification as a starting point for any interested developers.
- We want drafters to imagine an equivalent for them of the “Integrated Development Environments” that help programmers to code (ideally with a tool sitting inside our Word templates or XML editors), rather than thinking we mean they have to draft their text first and then go back over it to mark it up.
- In the longer term we would like to see developers create these drafting tools, starting with our basic spec, but for now we are just illustrating what a tool could look like.
Building on related work
- Programmers already have these tools to help them when they are writing code. Jersey’s Legislative Drafting Office has a “coding club”, where we have seen the benefit of tools in an online Python IDE, Editor, Compiler, Interpreter which (for instance) knows what you have already defined. Grimmelmann explains how lawyers could benefit from equivalents of an Integrated Development Environment and Jupyter Notebooks.
- Oracle Intelligent Adviser is an existing commercial tool (from before generative AI) that shows it is already possible to help draft & check computer-readable business rules, and it was originally designed with legislation in mind.
- We want to build on Schwartz & others (2023) “Design Principles for Integrated Legislation Drafting Environment”, who were the first to spell out what this could mean for legislative drafting. We want to adapt their approach for the Commonwealth style of drafting.
- In the EU there is the LEOS editing tool. They are looking at adding functions to help EU drafters and to allow them to mark up more elements in their Akoma Ntoso system (potentially using LegalRuleML) - see “Drafting legislation in the era of AI and digitisation” and “Overview of smart functionalities in drafting legislation in LEOS”. The UK’s LawMaker drafting system is XML-based, also using Akoma Ntoso, and has also been looking at LegalRuleML.
- Just before this project started, we met Oswald Maskens who demonstrated a model he had made, gave us a talk on his ideas about leveraging tools for software engineering in legal corpus management, and showed us VS Code as an example of what an IDE could offer for legislative drafters.
What would the imaginary tool do?
- The tool would help the drafter to be rigorous in creating (and marking up for computer readability) -
- if-and-or-not structures,
- defined terms and repeated undefined terms (which should have the same meaning each time),
- provisions that use “must”, “must not” or “may”,
- other key elements such as offences and vires (powers to make subsidiary legislation),
- any standard adaptable provisions arising from “Common Legislative Solutions”.
- The idea would be to use drop-down lists of suggestions (& other help) to enable drafters to write consistently while the tool automatically marks up the text correctly (and possibly gives useful error messages when it detects an inconsistency).
Some examples of what the tool could do (as descriptions, but eventually as demos)
We want to use mock-ups to demonstrate what we mean, as it is far easier to get the ideas across to the rest of the legislative drafting community that way. But we will also see if we can produce a basic specification that a developer could use as starting material, and we need to explain what we mean in text as well as through demos, so here is an attempt -
- For instance if you have already defined “agriculturalist”, and in a later provision you start typing “ag”, the tool would suggest “agriculturalist” as a defined term. If you accept the suggestion by clicking on it then it would complete the word, but it would also mark up the word as a use of the defined term.
- Similarly it could help with constructing “if” provisions, by marking the conditions, the and/or between them, and the effects, and so on.
One way for a legislative drafter to think about it is just as doing something more than your current system already does for you (we hope).
- You might be in one of the bigger drafting offices that have already moved over to writing in an XML editor (like LawMaker in UK offices).
- But if your office is still using Word (like Jersey), you probably have Word styles and templates (and maybe macros) that already help you to format your next paragraph/sub-paragraph/etc and number it correctly instead of you having to do that manually.
- In the XML systems the editor is (behind the scenes) adding metadata that identifies the provision as a paragraph with that number so that a computer can read the metadata.
- This tool would just be adding more metadata behind the scenes (or perhaps generating a twin version) to identify the logical elements as well as the structural elements.
Much of this would be by auto-complete suggestions, so imagine -
- you have defined “farmer” (which it helped you with) and then further on you type “fa” - the tool offers to auto-complete the word you have defined, as well as marking that word up as a use of the defined term,
- you type the first couple of letters from a word you haven’t defined but you have used already, maybe “sheep” (and the system ignores logical ones like “and” or trivial ones, but ideally catches grammatical variations) - the tool offers “sheep” as one of the auto-complete options, but on the basis that it marks it up to reflect that it should have the same meaning as every other use of “sheep” in that draft,
- you are drafting an offence provision, using standard wording, so you pick a drop-down option for that or you type “co” - the tool offers to auto-complete “commits an offence and is liable to” as well as marking that up as an offence-creation,
- you type “the Minster m” - the tool offers to auto-complete that as “the Minster may” or alternativel as “the Minster may by Order” - if you pick the Order one it automatically marks up those words as creating vires for a subsidiary (specifying that it is an Order, and in Jersey it would specify which Minister on the footing that when you typed “the M” it suggested “the Minister” as the term you defined as Minister for X),
- you want do something that is covered by Common Legislative Solutions, or you look like you are doing it, and you pick a menu or the tool pops up an offer to use the Jersey standard wording for that kind of provision, as well as marking it up.
But it is not just auto-complete, and isn’t just a glorified handler of a precedent bank -
- you press enter to start a new paragraph (your system already automatically formats that as a paragraph and numbers it properly, and, if it is an XML system, already identifies that numbered para with metadata) - the tool pops up an offer to help you in case you are making an if-then provision (which most provisions are), and if you click yes then it helps you clarify in your own mind what the conditions and effects* are and how the **and/or/not elements work, as well as marking them up,
- you type “must” (or pick it from a menu) -
- the tool prompts you to check that you have a clear enough link to the consequences (in another provision, or implied) if the “must” is breached,
- it asks if you are applying the “must” to a person (and asks if you are sure you want to use “must” if it isn’t a person),
- if it thinks you have used passive voice after the “must”, it asks you to check whether you really want to,
- and so on - it does not need to dictate drafting rules, unless they are compulsory in your office.
The aim is to make this clearer by producing videos of a mock-up of what the tool would be doing.
This page is being updated. See our sub-project “What might an IDE-like drafting tool look like?” on OSF for more.