Three things legal staff want you to know.

• Position: WHAT STAFF KNOW

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Legal services staff strive to protect the integrity of state statutes. They are the first line of defense against ambiguous laws and unintended consequences.

Legal services staff are the attorneys, bill drafters and editors who write bills, revise the code, conduct legal research, review administrative rules, litigate cases, compile and publish the statutes and administrative rules, provide legal support for redistricting and committee work, and more.

1 We write for a living.

Our primary purpose is to draft and edit bills that accomplish the goals of the sponsors. As attorneys, revisers and editors for the legislature, we do not make policy. Our challenge is to figure out how to implement policy through the law.

We must consider all the ways a statute might be interpreted--or misinterpreted-- by the courts and those who will carry out its purpose.

We work to ensure the language in the law carries out the intended goals of the legislature. Instead of looking at language with one argument or one set of interests in mind, our goal is to predict the many different ways it might be interpreted.

So, the drafting advice we give, and the editing and revising changes we make, are intended to result in statutes that are as clean, clear, understandable and, yes, even elegant, as they can be. Although we work invisibly--statutory text has no bylines--our work is powerful.

2 We are guardians of the statutes.

We sweat the small stuff because the challenges of making statutory language clear, complete, concise, coherent and congruent with existing law are many, requiring deep knowledge within our own disciplines. We relish the challenge!

We work almost exclusively in the statutes, and we address constitutional issues on a regular basis.

Many of us are responsible for revising the statutes, which may include reviewing the laws that are enacted and incorporating them into the code; eliminating repealed provisions; and checking for errors and making recommendations to remove obsolete provisions.

We do all of this without making substantive changes to the law. Substantive change is the role of the legislature; technical accuracy is the role of legal services staff.

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3 Our duty is to the legislature.

We work for the legislature because we believe in the legislative process. We are committed to...