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Generating the NI Speaker's Brief

Generating the NI Speaker's Brief

The Speaker’s Brief is prepared around the same time as the Grouping List, in advance of the debate. Before you can generate the Speaker’s Brief, you will need to have grouped the amendments.

How to generate a Speaker’s Brief

The Speaker’s Brief is generated automatically by Lawmaker, but will require manual intervention to format and expand them items with options and further information.

Step 1: Generate the Speaker’s Brief

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Dialog box for the Speaker’s Brief

  1. Select Amendment Actions > Create Official List

  2. Select Speaker’s Brief

  3. Update the relevant information in the dialog box and click on Create

Step 2: Update the into box

  1. Any extra text or paragraphs e.g. procedural changes or mutually exclusive amendments can be inserted selecting the appropriate item from the insert menu (e.g. bulleted list)

  2. Concatenate individual amendment numbers into more readable formats e.g. Amendments 1 to 8, 10, 16 and 20.

Step 3: Reduce the length of long amendments

  1. Trim excess lines from amendments by selecting whole provisions using the Structure View (see Using the structure view | Selecting more than one provision ) and deleting them.

  2. To insert “Full amendment text as per Marshalled List“ into an empty element, use SHIFT+Enter to insert an empty Text element

  3. You can also remove supporters if required

Step 4: Update the group boxes

  1. Insert gaps between paragraphs by using keyboard shortcut SHIFT+Enter. An empty ‘Text’ element will appear but this will not render in the PDF and results in a space between paragraphs instead.

  2. Concatenate individual amendment numbers into more readable formats e.g. Amendments 1 to 8, 10, 16 and 20.

  3. Update the chairperson’s name and title

  4. Add any extra text or paragraphs e.g. procedural notes or mutually exclusive amendments as required

Step 5: Insert options

  1. Where there are different options e.g. mutually exclusive amendments or amendments not moved, you will need to manually insert the option intro, start and end rubrics using the insert menu.

  2. To insert an option after an amendment, move your cursor so that it is in the List Body element in the breadcrumb. To do this, place your cursor in the far-right margin beside the proposer (close the proposer box if you accidentally open it) and use right-arrow on your keyboard to move your cursor through the elements and into the List Body (watch the breadcrumb). When in List Body, click Enter and select the appropriate option from the insert menu.

  3. You can use SHIFT+Enter to space out the options if required.

  4. The paragraphs will appear in the structure view meaning you can use ‘drag & drop’ to move them elsewhere in the document if you inserted them in the wrong place by accident.

Step 6: Update amendment boxes

  1. Amendments to amendments are currently all inserted into the same box as their target amendment. If you prefer to present them in separate boxes, you will need to insert additional empty boxes via the insert menu and cut and paste the amendment to amendment text into each box as required

  2. Any extra text or paragraphs e.g. procedural notes relating to mutually exclusive amendments

Step 7: Final formatting updates

  1. When you have finished making your changes, save your changes and generate a PDF using Document > Generate PDF in the upper tool bar

  2. Check the print layout.

  3. If you want to move boxes so that they appear at the start of a new page you can either:

    1. Insert a page break (using the Insert > Insert page break) before the box, or

    2. Export to Word and make final adjustments to print layout here.

You can move boxes around using the structure view which allows you to restructure the Speaker’s Brief as required.

The amendments are copies of the original amendment so you can edit them as much as you like in the Speaker’s brief without altering the source amendment.

Only one person can edit the Speaker’s Brief at a time as it’s not possible to acquire locks on individual fragments in the document - instead you will acquire a lock on the whole document.