Adding as much value as you can

An ideal draft has two features: it accurately reflects the policy, and it is legally sufficient to carry out that policy.

The legislative process being what it is, there is rarely enough time to achieve an ideal draft. In the real world, lawmakers have policies that are complicated or less than fully formed, and need them reduced to writing not in weeks or days but in hours or minutes. The policy may not be fully developed; the policy may be based on factual or legal assumptions that either are not confirmable or are not in fact correct; the lawmaker may insist on using words that are politically useful rather than words that are clear. There are many reasons why an ideal draft cannot be achieved.

In many cases all you can do is add as much value as you can under the circumstances. Learn as much about the problem, the context, and the proposed solution as you can. Review various approaches where you can. Spot as many issues as you can. Discuss them with the lawmaker as best you can. Deliver a draft that, under the circumstances, is as faithful and effective as you can make it. To the extent you have concerns about whether the draft is faithful and effective, articulate those concerns.

Those are the steps in the drafting process. In a legislative emergency, you may cycle through those steps only once, and only fleetingly. When not in a crisis, you may cycle through those steps a dozen times or more.