Advanced Legislative Drafting: Sharpening your drafting skills

Dates

• 8 - 19 September 2025 - London (£4,750)

Course Outline

Good quality legislation is vital to the governance of any jurisdiction, so the need for a clear and unambiguous statement of the law underpinning Government policy is essential.

To be able to draft effectively, legislative drafters need to be able to analyse rigorously the drafting instructions aiming to give effect to that policy and work out the necessary legislative changes.  They need a clear understanding of how legislation should be set out and the functions of various elements in it, for example, commencement, objects, application and duration provisions. This workshop will enable participants to structure different types of legislation commonly encountered.  For example, those that set up statutory corporations, provide for licensing of certain activities or raise taxes.

The workshop will build on existing drafting experience to enhance the skills of those already engaged in legislative drafting. It is recommended for drafters who have had less than 5 years’ drafting experience and particularly those who have never previously attended a legislative drafting workshop or who wish to refresh their understanding of modern legislating drafting. The workshop will give participants the opportunity to put their learning into practice by undertaking exercises, either individually or jointly with other attendees, to be reviewed by the course tutors.

Drafters will gain great benefit from working with colleagues from a variety of jurisdictions and the workshop encourages participants to share problems and solutions they have encountered in their work.

Course Objectives

On completion, you will be able to:

• Understand and articulate some of the finer points of the skill of legislative drafting
• Appreciate and work on particular elements of the types of legislation regularly encountered
• Address specificaspects of drafting that drafters often find challenging
• Apply skills to better design and structure legislation
• Improve and modernise your style of drafting through discussion of modern thinking such as plain language techniques and gender silent drafting.

Key topics

• Analysis of drafting instructions and testing the policy
• Structure and planning of new legislation
• Developing a modern drafting style - including use of plain language and gender silent drafting
• Drafting particular provisions - such as application provisions, definitions and transitionals
• Drafting secondary legislation
• Drafting for particular purposes – such as constitutions, setting up statutory corporations, licensing regimes and taxation legislation