About the Legislative Drafting Office

​​O​ur team

The Legislative Drafting Office (LDO) is a team of lawyers and legislation editors who draft and publish Jersey legislation.

Our team includes:

• the Principal Legislative Drafter, who is the head of the office
• Senior Legislative Drafters managing our trainee programme and overseeing editorial and technology functions
  
• a team of Legislative Drafters and Trainee Legislative Drafters, who are non-practising lawyers working with policy officers to develop legislation
• an editorial and technology team coordinating the production and publication of legislation so it is as easy as possible to understand and access
• a Legislation Services Consultant providing specialist technical and advisory services throughout the office

We are part of the States Greffe. We are also a member of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel (CALC), which promotes cooperation in matters of legislative drafting and training. We have presented several papers at CALC conferences.

Article 19 of the Legislation (Jersey) Law 2021 sets out the primary objective of the Legislative Drafting Office, and Article 20 gives the functions of the Principal Legislative Drafter.

Find more information about us on YouTube and LinkedIn.

Our roles and responsibilities

Drafting Jersey legislation

Policy officers across Government departments instruct our legislative drafters to develop and write legislation. We work with the policy officers to develop and refine the policy and we draft legislation that gives effect to it.

We draft:

• Laws
• Regulations
• Orders
• Acts
• Rules
• Bye-laws
• Explanatory notes

We do not draft Rules of Court.

If a Minister wants to amend draft Regulations or a draft Law before it is debated in the States Assembly, we draft the amendments in consultation with the Minister’s officers. We also provide a confidential drafting service to scrutiny panels and States Members who want to challenge or change draft Regulations and Laws.

​Publishing Jersey legislation

Our editorial and technology team publishes Jersey legislation through the Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB). This means that all current Jersey law is available to the public free of charge as part of JLIB’s commitment as a member of the Free Access to Law Movement.

JLIB is the only website authorised by the Principal Legislative Drafter to publish official versions of Jersey legislation, under Article 17 of the Legislation (Jersey) Law 2021.

We publish:

Consolidated legislation

This is found under current law on JLIB and includes:

• changes that have been made by amending legislation
• minor changes and corrections that have been made by the Principal Legislative Drafter under the Legislation (Jersey) Law 2021. This can include correcting a cross-reference or removing a provision that has expired
• changes made by the Law Revision Board under the Legislation (Jersey) Law 2021 on the advice of the Principal Legislative Drafter

Enacted legislation

This is legislation as it was originally adopted, not including any later changes.

Pending legislation

These are Laws that have been adopted by the States Assembly and sent to His Majesty in Council for royal assent, but have not yet been registered in the Royal Court.

Computer-Readable Legislation Project 2023 to 2025

The Legislative Drafting Office has a 2 and a half year project to find the best way for drafters and colleagues to produce computer-readable versions of the logical structure of our draft legislation. This work is part of the global "Rules as Code" movement and we are currently working with the Research Project in Computional Law at Singapore Management University​.

If computers can follow the structure of legislation, they will be able to check our drafts for inconsistencies or unexpected effects. The drafters can then fix any logical problems before the legislation is enacted. Computers can then also guide humans through the legislation once it’s published.

We are also working with Digital Jersey to see whether artificial intelligence can help with reading legislation. We’ll produce guidance and training material for drafters, using the lessons learned about drafting during the project.

Introduction to the Computer-Readable Legislation Project

Find more information on the Computer-Readable Legislation Project (CRLP) and the CRLP blog.