By Katie Ziegler

Here’s an excuse for not getting around to cleaning out that file cabinet: You never know when you might need those old brochures from decades ago to prove the adage, “what is old is new again.”

Take, for example, this agenda for an NCSL Senior Legislative Drafting Seminar in 1992. Though 25 years have passed, the importance of the topics discussed has certainly not changed.

Witness the sessions, “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Political Role in American Lawmaking: Some Ramifications for the States” and “Drafting for the Reader: Theory and Practice.”

Participants at this meeting were asked to identify their high-priority issues for discussion. Check out the list below. Though there may be some topics to add were this meeting being held today, and our 21st century digital reality means that present-day answers might differ, you’d be hard-pressed to delete any items as irrelevant.

• How do you specialize: by subject matter or some other way?
• What subject areas do you consider the most difficult?
• What types of assignments do drafters have when the legislature is out of session?
• What other duties do drafters have in addition to drafting legislation, such as drafting veto messages, preparing summaries of legislation, preparing articles for the blue book on judicial decisions?
• In what ways do you communicate with draft requestors?
• What ways have you found to create a good working relationship with your clients?
• If requests for bills or amendments are limited in any way, such as by a cut-off date or a numerical limit for each legislator, do the limits work, or are there ways the limits are circumvented?
• How are requests for bills prioritized?
• What kind of system is used to track requests?
• Are floor amendments allowed, and if so, who drafts them?
• What limits are there on the timing or subject matter of an amendment?
• How do you handle initial applicability problems in the drafts?
• If a bill is passed and signed into law, how does that law change later drafting procedures?
• What method to you have for checking cross-references?
• What documents does the legal section prepare in addition to bills, amendments, and resolutions?
• What published material on drafting do you think drafters need, and what is most useful?
• What kinds of conventions, conferences or training sessions have you found helpful?
• What successful methods have you found to convince your clients of the difficulties of drafting?
• What do you like most and least about your job?
• If you could change one thing about your operation, what would it be?
   

If you’d love to learn other staffers’ answers to questions like these, check out NCSL’s professional association for Research, Editorial, Legal and Committee Staff, known as RELACS. Read the RELACS Report newsletter and consider attending a future seminar.

And, if you were in Jacksonville, Fla., back in 1992, let us know what you thought of the meeting!

Katie Ziegler is a program manager in NCSL's Member Outreach and Digital Communications Division.

Email Katie