Drafting inline NI amendments

Inline amendments are amendments made directly to the bill which are converted into traditional amendments. You do not need to generate amendments inline for auto-apply to work in Lawmaker as auto-apply works by applying the traditional amendment. For this reason, the recommended approach to drafting inline is to get as far as you can with the inline document and do any final updates in the traditional List of Draft Amendments (LoDA) before submitting.

How to draft amendments inline

Step 1: Create a traditional LoDA

From the Amendment Workspace tab, click +New.
Select “Inline” as the Type of Amendment, select “As Introduced” from the Bill version dropdown menu, select the appropriate stage and give the list a unique name
A copy of the published bill will appear in the Editor ready to record inline amendments against

Step 2: Create inline amendments

Leaving out text: highlight the text you want to leave out and select Leave out from the hover tool bar

Leaving out whole provisions: select the provisions using the breadcrumb or using the structure view (which is easier when selecting multiple provisions) and from the Inline Amendment Tools right-hand panel, click on Leave out

Insert text: place cursor in the correct location in the document and click Enter to view the insert menu and select Insert Text

Inserting whole provisions: place cursor in the correct location in the document and click Enter to view the insert menu and select the appropriate provision

Substituting text: highlight the text you want to substitute and select Substitute from the hover tool bar. An empty text box will appear allowing you to type in the replacement text

Substituting whole provisions: select the provisions using the breadcrumb or using the structure view (which is easier when selecting multiple provisions) and from the Inline Amendment Tools right-hand panel, click on Substitute. Type into the replacement provision that was inserted.

Step 3: View the traditional amendments

Save your changes before you can view the traditional amendments
View the Inline Amendment Tools right-hand panel
Click on View Traditional Amendments button
A new browser tab will open with a traditional List of Draft Amendments (LoDA) with the amendments you created inline converted in traditional amendments

How to manage proposers and supporters

Tip

The recommended approach to add proposers (and supporters) to inline amendments is to do it in the traditional LoDA once you have finished drafting the amendments inline.

With the traditional amendments displayed in the Editor, either:
1. Update multiple amendments in one go using Tools > Manage Members…, or
2. To update a single amendment, click on the proposer element to open the ‘Update Members’ dialog box
Save your changes

How to manage out of sync amendments

If you make a change to an amendment in the traditional LoDA, an ‘out-of-sync’ warning marker is applied to the equivalent amendment in the inline LoDA. This marker is displayed as a black triangle on the relevant inline amendment in the Inline Amendments right-hand panel. It will prevent you from unwittingly making changes to this amendment and overwriting the changes you made to the traditional version. If you want to remove this marker to allow changes to be overwritten, click on the black triangle marker to remove it from the amendment in the inline document.