Helen views legislation as a channel of communication from the state to the users. Good legislation clearly communicates to lay people, learned non lawyers, and lawyers/judges what the state wants of them and why, thus inciting their willing participation in government policy. This is effective legislation, ie good legislation. 

Helen's effectiveness paradigm is expressed in her monograph Drafting Legislation: Art and Technology of Rules and Regulation, the main reference book in legislative studies (reviewed by Public Law, Legal Studies, The Loophole, Statute Law Review, Theory and Practice of Legislation, European Journal of Law Reform, Rassegna Parlamentare, Zeitschift fur Gesetzgeburg, LesGez: Legislation and Evaluation, European Journal of Risk Regulation; and translated in Chinese by China Press in 2022). The Loophole, the publication of the Commonwealth Association for Legislative Counsel, dedicated one whole issue in the review of her monograph and greeted it as the most important publication of the decade in drafting. 

Helen is the editor of Thornton's Legislative Drafting (5th and 6th eds), the leading manual for professional drafters worldwide. Her work was endorsed by Grant Thornton.

Helen, with Professor Ulrich Karpen, edited the two volume Hart/Nomos opus Legislation in Europe: A Country by Country Handbook for Scholars and Practitioners, and Legislation in Europe: A Handbook for Scholars and Practitioners.  

Helen is a popular public speaker. Recently she has lectured on legislation for sustainability and resilience, reform of EU legislation for sustainable integration, effectiveness of legislation, the comprehensibility of EU legislation, confidence in EU legislation, gender inclusivity v gender neutrality: a drafting perspective, and emergency legislation in the COVID19 times.

Helen's expertise is recognised internationally. She is a Senior Associate Research Fellow, IALS; Visiting Professor at QMUL and Xianmen University China; Associate of the Centre for European Constitutional Law (Athens); Associate of the Centre for Research in Language and Law, Napoli; Member of the Advisory Board of  Kimble Centre for Legal Drafting (Colley Law School, USA), the Centre for Legislation, LeTrobe (Austr), and the Legal Issues Centre at Otago (NZ); Member of the Editorial Board of EJLR, TPLeg, and NovaLogos; and President of the International Association for Legislation.