Parliamentary counsel are lawyers who prepare drafts of legislation to be passed into law.
The job of a parliamentary drafter is to draft the detailed form of proposed laws, in a way that will accurately reflect the intentions of the politicians who are promulgating them, without leaving loopholes or producing perverse results.
[1] This is a difficult task, and the pursuit of exact and watertight legislation has often resulted in obscure and convoluted language.
Such language has been criticised both by government bodies such as the committee under Sir David Renton that reported in 1975 (and recommended drafting which was more based on principles than specific details to address every possible situation).
However, the post has been held by a number of distinguished lawyers, for example Bernard O'Dowd in Australia, John Ferguson McLennan specialising in Scots law (which though enacted entirely in the UK parliament from 1707 until 1999, is distinct from English law), and William Philip Schreiner in South Africa.