The Bill has been passed.  It’s now an Act so where is it in your database?

Why isn’t it there?

These are questions frequently heard by our Customer Service team. 
To answer them we asked senior editor, online legislation, Ian Neilson to step you through the process an Act goes through before it appears in our database ready for your use.

From Bill to Brookers Online database – The Four Steps

1. A Bill has its third reading and is passed by Parliament if it has majority support.
   (It only becomes law once the Act has received the Royal assent. This is usually a week after the third reading, but, depending on the complexity of the legislation, can take 2-3 weeks)
2. At Thomson Reuters the Act is converted by our editors into xml - the specialist mark up or programming language required by our online legislation system. Each Act is proofread, has cross reference links inserted and then is given a final check before uploading to documentum, the source file database for all Thomson Reuters legislation.
   (NB. Acts that cannot be processed within 2 working days of receipt of the assent copy are first loaded as a pdf)
3. Act is then processed as part of the next nightly build and loaded onto the online statutes database (unless errors in the file cause the build process to fail)
4. Where errors occur these have to be corrected and the file reprocessed in the next nightly build

Did you know?

• You can refer to the Online Updater  ( if you subscribe to the service) for details of new acts and bills and their effect before they are available in Law Partner.
• Updating of existing legislation made by the new Act cannot start until the xml file is in documentum
• All updating work is done by one editor, then independently checked by a second editor, before the updated legislation is available in online
• Law Partner legislation is also used in specialist libraries and commentary is sometimes added by the editors for those libraries