Auto-application of amendments to a Bill version

Lawmaker will allow any user to select one or more amendment to apply to a copy of the bill. You can either create a new bill version or apply amendments to an existing working version. The amendments do not have to be derived either traditional or inline documents.

How to apply amendments to a bill version

On the Amendment Manager tab, select one or more amendments you wish to apply using the check boxes down the left-hand side.
From the Amendment Actions drop-down menu in the top right of the screen, select Apply Amendments.
You can select to apply the amendments to a new Bill version or to an existing Bill version.
Enter or select the details of the Bill version.
Click Create.

When the operation is complete, you will be taken to the project tab so you can access the Bill version that has been created or updated with the amendments.

A message will pop up indicating how many amendments were successfully applied.

Viewing the applied amendments in the Editor

Amendments successfully applied

When you open the Bill in the Editor, all successfully applied amendments will be listed on the Inline Amendments right-hand panel.

Clicking on a card on the Inline Amendments panel will jump to the location in the Bill where that amendment appears.

You can use the 'X' button the inline amendment's card to remove the amendment from the Bill if you no longer want it applied.

Accepting all the amendments

If you want to apply the amendments (i.e. to remove the tracked changes) then you should click on the Accept All button at the top of the Inline Amendments right-hand panel.

In some cases, you might need to add some printing/silent changes (non-substantive changes to the text) in and around the amendments. You can do this using tracked changes. Make sure you turn off tracked change mode before using the Accept All button in the Inline Amendments panel, otherwise the results will look very strange. If you had used tracked changes for the printing point changes, using Accept All will not change these so you can share this 'clean' version of the document with Counsel if you like and they can verify the printing changes easily.

Amendments that should be reviewed

The Review right-hand panel will automatically generated comments on amendments that were successfully applied but where users are advised to check their insert location or for the need to make printing/silent changes. This occurs in particular where there are two or more amendments being inserted in the same location e.g. two or more amendments inserting some paragraphs to the same provision.

Amendments that weren’t applied

Any amendments that couldn't be applied will also be listed on the Review right-hand panel. Reasons for not applying an amendment include:

the location information (clause/schedule, page or line) was invalid or incorrect,
the amendment overlapped with the location of another amendment, or
the amendment's instruction wasn't in a form that was recognised.

Get in touch with the service team if you think an amendment should have been applied but wasn’t. Auto-application of amendments is still a beta feature and all feedback will help us refine it in future.