Influence

In addition to working in the academic sphere, the Model Bill Team have actively engaged at an elite level politically and with wider civil society. By meeting with a wide range of stakeholders, hosting private and public events, preparing briefing documents and reports and pro-actively engaging with the media, the team have significantly influenced political and public discourse on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland.

In 2020, Queens University commissioned a report to examine the utility of the team's collaboration with Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) to determine whether the partnership had met its stated aim of placing the joint team 'at the very heart of the debate on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland.'

The report concluded that "It is clear that the outputs of the collaboration have not been simply distributed one-way into society (broadcast), but that the efforts by the team to engage directly and meaningfully with stakeholders has meant that their work has been assimilated and absorbed by wider society and reflected back in a multi-way discourse (communicative). Moreover, the quality of the work is evidenced by its international respectability, including with the United Nations."