What are references in Lawmaker?
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Valid internal references will show as purple , e.g. “section 3(2)(a)”
External references will show as blue, e.g. “section 7 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2000”
References that are invalid or have been manually altered are shown with different formatting which is described below in relation to specific features (the formatting is also summarised in the table here: Formatting of references). The formatting in the editor is not replicated in the PDF version of the document but references will become hyperlinks in the PDF that can be used to jump to the target of the reference.
Creating references
References can be created in two ways, using the Tag references feature (which tags both internal and external references) or by copying a reference to a provision via the structure view or the right-click context menu and pasting it into your document (for internal references only).
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To identify external references, Lawmaker relies on data about enacted legislation from www.legislation.gov.uk. Lawmaker can’t therefore identify references to legislation that has not yet been enacted or made. This also means that, if for some reason www.legislation.gov.uk is not available for a period of time, then Lawmaker will not be able to properly identify external references during that time but the Tag reference function will otherwise work as expected for internal references.
Lawmaker identifies and marks up both references to external provisions and to the documents containing those provisions. While sometimes references consist of both together, e.g. “section 12 of the Scotland Act 1998”, Lawmaker is also able to identify references to external provisions where the context determines that they relate to an enacted document rather than the document containing them. In particular, it will do this:
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Where however Lawmaker detects that the target of an existing reference has changed (e.g. because the context in which that reference sits has changed), the reference will be changed accordingly but it will be marked as requiring checking. Such references will appear dark red in the Editor (e.g. “regulation 52”) and each one will also be highlighted with a document check error. From the document check panel, you can confirm that the reference remains valid or you can remove the reference mark-up if you think it is no longer appropriate.
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Lawmaker will try and update both valid and invalid internal references [but not references that have been manually edited]. If Lawmaker can no longer find the target of a valid reference in the current document then it will change the reference’s status to invalid. Equally, if Lawmaker finds the target of an invalid reference then it will change the reference’s status to valid.
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If you choose to remove the reference tags from one part of a complex referencecompound reference (e.g. “sections 5 to 7 of the Police Act 2007”), Lawmaker will automatically remove the mark-up from all other parts at the same time.
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