Guidelines for Drafting Bill Summaries

An important task for the legislative lawyer is to draft bill summaries. In general, a bill summary should be brief, but easy to read and understand. It should provide a succinct, clear, and accurate synopsis of the major points of the bill. The following are some guidelines to assist the bill drafter, such as in preparing the Legislative Counsel’s Digest in California.

As a preliminary matter, the bill drafter should always strive to use “plain English” words in the bill summary, rather than any legalistic, technical words that may be used in the body of the bill. Of course, the drafter must be careful to use reasonably accurate terms and avoid making debatable legal conclusions when substituting plain English words for technical terms.

The bill summary must be written in complete sentences. A bill summary must begin with a description of current law, in order to place the bill’s proposed changes into context. Thereafter, the summary should describe how the bill will change current law. And, the substance of a repealed statute should be indicated in the summary if it is important to the bill.

As a general rule, the bill summary should describe changes in order of appearance in the bill, but consideration should be given to the importance of the bill’s provisions or some other logical order. In general, this means following the order in which the changes appear in the body of the bill.

Moreover, the bill summary should include specific numbers, dates, and amounts contained in a bill, rather than using generic phrases such as “after a specified date.” The drafter should try to describe the definitional changes and how they change current law, if the changes are important to the bill.

Finally, the bill summary should mention provisions such as the inclusion of a legislative declaration, effective date (if specified), and other items, such as a special statute designation, or the inclusion of an urgency clause.