The University of North Carolina School of Law announced today that Leigh Osofsky, William D. Spry III Distinguished Professor of Law and her writing partner, Joshua Blank, professor of law and director of the UCI Law in NYC Program, have been selected by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) to conduct a study of U.S. federal agencies’ use of “agency legal explainers” — such as website descriptions, social media posts, FAQs and practice guides — to improve public understanding of the laws the agencies administer.

“My co-author and I are grateful for ACUS’s support to examine this widespread, yet understudied, way that the government communicates with the public at large about the law. We hope that our research will help improve agency practices,” said Osofsky.

ACUS is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government charged with convening expert representatives from the public and private sectors to recommend improvements to administrative process and procedure. The ACUS Assembly is comprised of the chairman, 10 council members, 50 government members, and 40 public members. Government members are agency heads or their designees drawn from a wide array of federal agencies. Public members are academics, practicing lawyers, and other experts in administrative procedure drawn from the private sector.

In their project for ACUS, Osofsky and Blank will meet with agency officials across the U.S. federal government to investigate agencies’ use of agency legal explainers. They will identify best practices for agency legal explainers, including when agencies use them, how agencies navigate tensions between accessibility and accuracy, what processes agencies use to develop them (including whether and how they consult with external parties), what processes agencies use to review and revise them, how agencies make them publicly accessible and to what extent they influence other publicly accessible explanations of the law (including those created by third-party artificial intelligence).

After conducting their review, Osofsky and Blank will write a report that will offer analysis and policy recommendations, which will become the basis for subsequent ACUS committee meetings. In 2027, Osofsky and Blank will attend several meetings where ACUS members and members of the public may offer comments on their draft report. In June 2027, they will present their final report to the full ACUS Assembly in Washington, D.C. If ACUS adopts Osofsky and Blank’s report and recommendations, it will publish the recommendations in the Federal Register and circulate them to the federal agencies. ACUS has launched a public website for the project, titled Agency Explanations of the Law, which will be updated with content over the next 18 months.

In 2021, Osofsky and Blank were selected by the ACUS to conduct a study of U.S. federal government agencies’ use of automated tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, to explain the law to the public. In 2022, ACUS voted to adopt 20 policy recommendations based on their report, which were then published in the Federal Register.