Teaching Legislation

I work for a government agency and I am not a lawyer. Our legislative regime is defined through statutes (Acts), regulations and protocols. Basically the statutes specify the broad legal provisions while the regulations flesh out the details and the protocols provide additional guidance. The statutes reference themselves, the regulations reference the statutes and the protocols reference the statutes and the regulations.

What I am interested in is techniques for explaining unwieldy statutes and regulations to lay persons (which includes the regulators who have to enforce the regime) and for representing dependencies between statutes, regulations and protocols. The latter is particularly germane as we are in the process of major legislative revisions. Although I am interested in plain language translation of our statutes I am mostly interested in graphical depiction of the legal framework.

I thought I’d start by sticking the table of contents of our primary statute and regulation side by side on a piece of E size (33″ x 44″) paper and drawing arrows. I have also thought of using flow charts and cross-functional flow charts to illustrate the regime with annotations that reference the specific legal provisions.

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.