How Dentons Turns Legislative Intelligence into Client Guidance in Minutes

CHALLENGE

Building the context behind every policy development

Dentons’ U.S. public policy practice tracks legislative, investigative, and regulatory activity across Congress, the administration, and federal agencies.

Depending on the client, that can mean assessing Capitol Hill developments, researching legislative proposals and potential sponsors, tracking congressional investigations, or supporting advocacy around federal rulemakings.

The difficulty is rarely in finding a single piece of information. It’s connecting multiple signals quickly enough to understand the broader implications for a client.

For some clients, Dentons may need to look across Congress for potential threats to the business – considering the client’s industry and the lawmakers who have historically focused on related issues, then narrowing that list to what creates exposure for the client.

“You’re having to process a much broader universe of information,” Cutts said.

Elections raise urgent questions beyond the results

Midterm elections can quickly expand the scope of the questions Dentons needs to answer for clients.

Clients are not only asking whether control of the House is expected to change, but what that shift could mean for the committees most relevant to their business. That can require assessing likely changes in committee leadership, priorities, and subcommittee direction.

“Yes, you can find out who’s going to be the next chair, but then it’s, ‘What does that mean for the direction of the entire committee?” Cutts said.

The analysis can extend further into subcommittees and the policy areas they oversee, making the question much more complex than simply identifying who is likely to hold a leadership role.

“Answering that question is much more complicated than just a few clicks,” Cutts said. “When the relevant information is in one place, we spend less time piecing it together and more time thinking through what it meant for our clients.”

Stakeholder positions can be difficult to uncover

That broader view also requires understanding who supports or opposes a measure – information that is not always easy to find.

A stakeholder may have taken a position months earlier in a press release or other sources, making that position difficult to uncover. Without a consolidated source for legislative research, finding those signals can become a time-consuming exercise.

“How am I going to find that?” Cutts said, noting that alternatives such as searching by bill number can be equally cumbersome.

Cutts noted that stakeholder positions may be dispersed across old press releases and other sources, while a search by bill number can yield only fragmented results.

SOLUTION

Building a fuller legislative picture in one place

Dentons’ U.S. public policy team turns to Bloomberg Government for legislative research, particularly when they need to quickly build a fuller picture for a client.

One recent client interaction put that speed to the test.

After a bill opposed by a client advanced out of a House committee, the Dentons team had only minutes to assess its prospects before a scheduled call. A team member checked Bloomberg Government for a key legislative signal.

“We were quickly able to determine there was no companion in the Senate,” Cutts said.

Combined with the team’s knowledge of the bill’s House sponsors, that information gave Dentons confidence to tell the client the measure was unlikely to become law.

The team was able to deliver its assessment before the second agenda item on the call.

Historical context to advance Hill conversations

Quick access to background research also helps Dentons prepare for conversations with Hill contacts.

Cutts describes that foundation as the “historical context” for a measure: “How many times has this bill been introduced before? Is there anything similar?”

The team uses Bloomberg Government to review sponsors and co-sponsors, prior introductions, similar legislation, bill summaries, and expert analysis. This provides a foundation of knowledge, so their Hill conversations can focus on what no document can tell you: real intentions, what’s happening behind closed doors, and what’s likely to happen next.

The platform also includes AI-assisted bill comparisons to identify semantically related measures, along with stakeholder information such as voting records, committee activity, and lobbying data.

For Dentons, that historical context is ultimately forward-looking. The team uses what it finds in Bloomberg Government to assess what may happen next – “all with an idea toward predicting the future,” Cutts said.

An intuitive legislative research workflow

Bloomberg Government brings legislative research that might otherwise be spread across government and other sites into one platform, with information organized around how a government relations team works.

“It’s very clear to me that the people that design the product understand what I do every day, because it’s coming in the exact structure that we need that information,” Cutts said.

He described the platform as “user-friendly and intuitive,” allowing the team to easily access bill summaries, legislative documents, text comparisons, and AI-assisted legislative insights.

That organization helps the team move through legislative research quickly without having to piece together information across multiple sources.

When it comes to the tools he trusts to do this type of research, Cutts was clear: “BGOV is my first choice and go-to platform.”