Regulatory Agencies Editing and Proofreading Services

A regulator's decisions are its jurisprudence. Each one is read by the party affected, by everyone else in the sector working out what the rule now means in practice, and by a court if it is appealed. That gives regulatory writing a peculiar double duty: it must resolve the case in front of it and simultaneously tell an industry what compliance looks like. Agencies that write decisions well need fewer of them, because the sector adjusts; agencies that write them poorly relitigate the same question with different parties for years.

We edit what regulatory agencies and tribunals produce — enforcement decisions and reasons, licensing and authorisation decisions and conditions, compliance and inspection reports, notices of contravention and administrative penalties, guidance documents and interpretive bulletins, regulatory policy and rule-making documents, consultation papers and responses to comment, compliance and enforcement policies describing how discretion is exercised, applicant and licensee guidance, registration and reporting requirements, annual reports and enforcement statistics, memoranda of understanding with other regulators, and public communications about regulatory action. Our editors check that reasons support the outcome, that conditions are capable of being complied with and monitored, and that guidance distinguishes requirements from recommendations.

The enforcement decision's reasons are where a regulator either builds a coherent body of practice or accumulates a pile of unrelated outcomes. A decision that recites the allegations, states that the panel considered all the evidence, and imposes a penalty tells the sector nothing about which conduct mattered or how the penalty was arrived at. We rewrite these so the findings of fact are separated from the analysis and from the sanction, so each element of the contravention is addressed against the evidence, so the aggravating and mitigating factors are listed with the weight given to each and the penalty is shown as arithmetic rather than as a judgement, and so the decision states what the licensee should have done — the sentence the rest of the industry is looking for. Where a decision departs from the agency's own prior practice, saying so and explaining why is what prevents an appeal succeeding on inconsistency.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including draft decisions, investigation material and information about identifiable parties. We are editors rather than lawyers or regulatory specialists, and we offer no view on any finding, penalty, condition or interpretation. What we can do is make reasons follow visibly from evidence and guidance usable by the people expected to comply with it.