How do we do this?

What's our process for taking the law and turning it into plain language?

New Zealand law isn’t covered by copyright. This means anyone can copy it and share it with other people.

To make this site, we take several steps:

  1. First, we have to download the entire law.
  2. We break this down into smaller parts that can fit onto one page, and get rid of anything we don’t think is useful.
  3. We send these parts to an AI to make it easier to read. We give the AI some specific instructions on how to make it simpler when we do this.
  4. The AI then sends us back a simple version.
  5. We add it to this website so you can read it.

We’ve done our best to keep all the important parts that we think people need to know. But we have had to make some choices about what to keep and what to leave out.

For example, we don’t include the full history of how a law has changed over time. We focus on what the law says right now.

Laws can change in small ways quite often. We do our best to keep up, but we can’t promise that we catch every tiny change as soon as it happens.

If you want to be 100% sure you’re reading the most up-to-date version of a law, it’s best to go to the official New Zealand legislation website. That site has the complete, official version of every law.

Remember, our simpler versions are here to help you understand the main points of the law. They’re not meant to replace the official legal documents. Sometimes this site might miss some information. If you need to know every detail for legal reasons, always check the official law.