Legislative Assistants have many legislative responsibilities, including drafting and approving form letters, handling committee work, cosponsoring bills, working with constituents, meeting with interest groups, and promoting the Member’s legislative agenda. These staffers will often brief the Member on policies, votes, hearings, etc. and may also have a hand in constituent correspondence, sometimes sending personalized responses or even meeting with constituents in person. Watch eLearning videos we’ve handpicked for this role. 

The Legislative Correspondent will usually create new or edit existing form letters for the Legislative Assistant to review in IQ. Each office can adapt controls and permission settings, so that a Legislative Correspondent can easily submit a draft of a form letter to an Legislative Assistant for approval within IQ.

The Legislative Assistant can then revise the letter using track changes, send back to the LC for more edits, or send the letter further up the chain for approval. Form letters in IQ are easily customizable, whether users are formatting text, inserting new graphics, or working with their ITC to create a new form letter template.

Creating a Form Letter Guide Revising a Form Letter Guide

IQ also allows two or more users to co-author form letters, so a Legislative Assistant can easily collaborate with other staff. This co-editing feature is convenient and secure, allowing multiple users to write, edit, chat, and review revision history with other staffers at the same time no matter where they are.

Legislative Assistants will often sit in on meetings relevant to the Member’s legislative priorities and/or meet with constituents in person. It’s important that these meetings be documented either for follow up or future reference. Users can record in-person meeting notes in IQ in custom fields built into the calendar module or as part of the appropriate legislative project service records.

LegiStats gives users the ability to tie individual legislative actions to related bills, assign items to a staffer for monitoring, and even track legislative success rates. LegiStats also includes an interactive Member Database with up-to-date contact information for every sitting Member of Congress plus complete voting histories going back to 2001. IQ users can conduct voting analysis to track how often and when a Member crossed party lines on a specific vote.

IQ also serves as a full documents management system, where users can upload files and new versions, that compliments office shared drives. IQ will log interactions with files, such as if a user checks out or uploads a new version of the document. Legislative Assistants can search and filter in the library module in IQ to view a full history of the form letters their office has created and used.

By integrating IQ with Microsoft Outlook, Legislative Assistants can send and receive responses to constituents from their Outlook email and all correspondence will also be automatically recorded in IQ. This function ensures that Legislative Assistants never miss a message from a constituent, even if they are not currently working in IQ.

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