Rules of Court
An official publication from one of the Massachusetts courts. You have the option to denote draft, working draft, proposed, and future effective Rules of Court in addition to current Rules.
Why use this content type?
A Rules of Court page is a formal, official law or set of laws from one of the Courts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including standing orders, court rulings, or evidence guides. This content type features fields specifically for Rules of Court, including Standing Order and Courts
Overview
Title
Required. The official title of the Rules of Court, displayed at the top of the page.
Short title
Optional. This field is used to shorten the full title of a page when displayed in a breadcrumb. First aim to shorten the actual page title if it’s long, but not so much that the title is no longer clear if someone comes directly to a page from a search engine.
Subheading
A short description displayed directly below the page title.
Type
Required. Select the specific kind of rule from a dropdown list. If the type you need is not in the list, you can ask us to add it using a ServiceNow request.
Standing order
An optional dropdown field to denote if the Rules of Court is a standing order, and if so, which kind.
Status
An optional field to denote if the Rules of Court is a draft, working draft, proposed, or has a future effective date.
Courts
List the specific Massachusetts courts that the Rules of Court is related to. This is an optional field.
Overview
A short description of the Rules of Court that will appear before the page’s main content. This is a rich text field that can contain any combination of formatted text, hyperlinks, and images. This is an optional field, but if no overview is entered you must have either a download or at least 1 section.
Listing description
An optional short description that will be displayed in Mass.gov search and if the Rules of Court is included in any Curated Lists. Content entered in this field will not be displayed anywhere on the Rules of Court page.
Parent page
The required Parent page field appears on all public-facing content types and it powers the breadcrumb-based navigation system.
The Mass.gov team prepopulated the field based on an analysis of which child pages belong to which parent pages. Each child page can be assigned only 1 parent, or higher-level page.
These connections, displayed in the form of breadcrumbs (i.e., links) above the page title, will help Mass.gov visitors find their way to relevant information regardless of where they start on the site.
Organization(s)
The organization or organizations that are responsible for publishing and maintaining the page on Mass.gov. This field will determine the links in the “Offered by” relationship indicator at the top of the page, as well as which organization the page is categorized under in the CMS backend.
Intended audience
This field isn’t being used yet, so there’s no need to fill it in.
Label(s)
Optional: Choose an existing label or create a new 1 so that your Rules of Court can become part of an automatic list within a Curated List.
Be sure to create specific labels. The label field is shared across the whole site, so your label should be unique and identifiable to prevent overlap with others
Collections
Optional. Most content will not be in a Collection. Only add content to a collection if the collection creator has approved it. In that case, select any collections, topics, and subtopics for this content.
If you later need to remove a page from a Collection, go back into the page and uncheck the box and select Save.
Learn more about collections.
Details tab
Adopted date
An optional field indicating the date the Rules of Court was officially adopted. This date does not necessarily have to be the date the page was published. If entered, the adopted date will appear directly underneath the page title.
Effective date
An optional field indicating the date the Rules of Court became effective. If entered, the effective date will appear directly underneath the page title.
Referenced sources
Link to any Massachusetts laws or any other legal documents that are cited within the Rules of Court. You can enter content from Mass.gov using the autocomplete field, or copy and paste an external link. External links must begin with “http://” or "https://". Referenced sources will appear at the top of the page underneath the adopted and effective dates.
Updates
An optional autocomplete field to link any developments or amendments concerning the Rules of Court. You may want to use the updates section to link to a press release noting the rule became official, for example. Any updates entered will appear directly underneath the page title, below referenced sources and adopted and effective dates.
Section
If you are listing the full text of the Rules of Court, you can enter the content in separate sections. Each separate section requires a section title, which will automatically be listed in a clickable table of contents under the short description, and a body, which is a rich text field that can contain any combination of formatted text, links, and images. You can change the order of sections by clicking and dragging or by using row weights.
Footnotes
List any footnotes referenced, with each preceded by a number matching a superscript number in a section. Footnotes are not linked.
Download
Offer a link to a document with the full regulation. You can add a new document or link to one that has already been uploaded to the CMS.
Related tab
Contact
Include contact information if this information needs to be displayed on the page. You can choose from an existing contact information item or create one.
Related
Add links to pages on Mass.gov or external links. These links display on the right side of the page in a desktop view and at the bottom on mobile devices.
Related collections
If your Rules of Court page is part of a larger collection, you can use this optional field to create a relationship indicator link at the top of the page.
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