Are there any legislative drafting attorneys who can talk to me about what the day-to-day is like?

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I only do this as a very small part of my job, 5% or less, but the way my firm does it involves a lot of research and memos looking into possible legal problems (preemption etc.) and comparative state laws if any exist, followed by very careful drafting

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I worked as one for the Illinois state legislature (Legislative Reference Bureau) and the work load was brutal. The first 6 or 7 weeks of session and especially right before bill intro deadlines are the hardest, with many nights working until about midnight just to stay on top of requests. The only good thing was that there was virtually no work during the summer at least for my drafting area. It's definitely not a field to get into if you want work/life balance, at least not at the state level. I would look for drafting positions with advocacy organizations instead.

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Sure, so a legislator would email the front desk with details about a request and the front desk would forward each email to the appropriate attorney. Once an attorney received a request, the attorney had to log the details of each request into a online database. (During the peak of session, there were so many requests that you could spend half a day just logging requests.) Most of the requests would ask for specific changes to already existing law but there were many requests asking to add an entirely new section to a code or add a new act. Those were the most time consuming because it could involve quite a bit of back and forth with staff via email or phone about the legislator's intent. Most of the time though, legislator's had already asked their staff to come up with a first draft of sample language, and our job was to edit, revise, and reorganize the draft as well as contact staff members to clarify intent and point out any legal issues or conflicts with current law. Once our draft was complete, we would send it to a senior attorney for review and a copy of the bill with a filing number would be sent to staff. Then we would mark the request as complete. It's not a hard job (depending on what area of code you're assigned to) but it can be very tedious and the work has to be done very quickly to stay on top of things. Feel free to PM me with any other questions!

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Following!

I knew a kid who left large city legal department for Michigan’s non-partisan Legislative Service Bureau Division.

He really regretted it. He complained about the difficult and tedious writing demands.

Boring! I did it for 1 year and was miserable.

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