Professional Associations Editing and Proofreading Services

A professional association holds a position it has to keep justifying: it represents its members' interests and it sets the standards those members are held to. Those pull in opposite directions whenever a member falls short, and the documents are where the association demonstrates which one wins. Bodies that write standards vaguely enough to avoid ever enforcing them find that the public, the regulator and their own better members all notice, and the association's value to everyone declines together.

We edit what professional bodies and learned societies produce — codes of ethics and professional conduct, practice standards and competency frameworks, continuing professional development requirements and guidance, accreditation and membership grade criteria, examination and assessment material, complaints and disciplinary procedures, disciplinary decisions and their published summaries, guidance notes interpreting the code, member communications and journals, consultation responses and policy positions, qualification and course accreditation documentation, mentoring and early career support material, and public-facing information explaining what membership signifies. Our editors check that a standard can be applied to a specific case by someone who was not involved in writing it.

The code of ethics is where associations most often write something unenforceable and call it a standard. A clause requiring members to act with integrity and maintain the reputation of the profession cannot found a disciplinary finding, because it does not describe conduct — and a panel that tries to apply it is making the rule up at the hearing. We work on codes so each obligation states what a member must do or must not do, in terms a panel could find proved or not proved on evidence; so the general principles are clearly separated from the specific rules, with the code saying which are which; so guidance notes give worked examples of the difficult cases, since the easy cases were never the problem; and so the interaction with the disciplinary procedure is explicit about the standard of proof and what sanctions attach to what. An association that can enforce its code is also one that can defend a member against an unfair complaint, which is the part membership actually buys.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including disciplinary material, draft standards and material about identifiable members. We are editors rather than lawyers or regulatory advisers, and we offer no view on any standard, complaint, disciplinary decision or regulatory question. What we can do is make standards applicable and procedures clear to the people subject to them.