Legal document assistant
Template:Globalize/USA A legal document assistant, or LDA (also commonly known as "document technician", “legal document preparer,” “legal technician,” “online legal document provider” and “legal document clerk”)[1] is a non-lawyer authorized to assist with the preparation of legal instruments. The profession is similar to a paralegal.
The role of a Legal Document Assistant varies significantly across legal jurisdictions, and therefore can be treated here in only the most general terms. Some acts performed by Legal Document Assistants may be lawful in one jurisdiction and prohibited in other jurisdictions.
History
Many LDAs view their professional history as descending directly from that of the "scribe", or "scrivener" (i.e.: a "learned writer"); in fact, although California became the first (and still the only) state to formally regulate the profession, the first licensing proposal was the "Oregon Scrivener's Act", introduced in the Oregon legislature in 1985. The terms "legal scrivener" and "independent paralegal" were commonly used through the late 1970s and up until 1994. In that year, the "Bankruptcy Reform Act" was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Among other provisions, it banned the use of the word "legal", in any form, to describe the services provided by non-attorney document preparers, and also specifically created the term "bankruptcy petition preparer". This forced many LDAs who assisted with bankruptcies to search for new terms to describe their profession.
Florida
It is commonly accepted that the first well-known LDA was Rosemary Furman; Furman, a Florida resident had been a legal secretary for about 35 years, when she was laid off in 1976. Not finding anyone willing to hire a middle-aged legal assistant, she began offering her services as a free-lance paralegal. Within a short time, she had developed a thriving business, not, as she had originally anticipated, from lawyers needing assistance, but instead from consumers wanting to purchase legal documents directly, to represent themselves in matters such as divorces, name changes and guardianship proceedings. When Furman was sued by the Florida Bar Association in 1977 for "unauthorized practice of law", she became somewhat of a national cause celebe. In the long run however, she was unsuccessful, and after losing her appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, she elected to close her business and retire, rather than be sent to jail for contempt.
Oregon
At about the same time that Rosemary Furman was receding from the public eye however, another woman began gaining national prominence for her role in the self-help legal profession. Peggy Muse, unlike Rosemary Furman, was not a retired legal secretary, in fact, she had never worked in a lawyer's office. An attractive woman in her 30s (in fact, a former model), Muse had been a consumer advocate for a small community newspaper in Medford, Oregon, where she lived with her three school-age children. When the column was canceled by the newspaper, she rented a small office space above a dress shop, and outfitted with a card table and two chairs, opened the Consumer Sounding Board ("CSB"); intended to be a private consumer advocacy agency, CSB soon grew into the business of preparing legal documents, as Muse discovered that one of the most common consumer complaints, related to the high cost of legal representation for relatively minor needs.
After establishing her office in Medford into a full-time storefront operation, with several employees, Muse moved to Oregon's largest city, Portland, and opened a second CSB office. Within a few years, she began to receive national attention, as well as attention from the Oregon State Bar. She was featured in a front-page sectional article in the Los Angeles Times, which in addition to detailing her Portland and Medford offices, also followed her in her mobile "paralegal van", as she went with an employee to set up shop in a small-town parking lot for a day, to offer her services to the residents of a rural area. Shortly after this, and after being featured in a segment of NBC's Today Show, she began offering franchises, as well as setting up additional company-owned offices. At its height, CSB had a total of 14 offices in 4 Western states. In 1993 however, after a 15-year legal battle, the Oregon Bar succeeded in convincing a judge in Medford to sentence Muse to jail for 20 days. Following that experience, she divested herself of her remaining offices, and moved to California, where she remains today, having been one of the first persons licensed there as an LDA, following the 1998 licensing act.
California
Legal Document Assistants in the State of California are still sometimes incorrectly referred to as "independent paralegals" or "freelance paralegals", even though it has been more then a decade since those terms became obsolete by law. On September 30, 1998 Governor Pete Wilson signed California State Senate Bill SB1418, regulating the legal document preparation profession in the State of California, and creating a new formal title, Legal Document Assistant (LDA).[2]
While many LDAs have paralegal education and experience, in California they are not the same as paralegals. Under California law, a paralegal is prohibited from providing services directly to the consumer. Paralegals may only be employed by an attorney, law firm, corporation, governmental agency, or other entity; and work under the direct supervision of a licensed attorney within the scope of that employment.[3] [4]
Unlike paralegals, Legal Document Assistants (LDAs) are authorized by law to provide legal document preparation services to consumers, after complying with the registration and bonding requirements. Neither paralegals nor LDAs are permitted to engage in the practice of law.
Legal Document Assistants are not lawyers and do not offer legal advice, discuss legal strategies, answer questions of a legal nature, select forms for the consumer, or appear in court on the consumer’s behalf. They are professionals, qualified through education, training or work experience, authorized to assist consumers representing themselves in legal matters by preparing and processing the necessary legal documents.
A Legal Document Assistant, as defined by the California Business & Professions Code (Section 6400 (c)) is: Any person who is otherwise not exempted and who provides, or assists in providing, or offers to provide, or offers to assist in providing, for compensation, any self-help service to a member of the public who is representing himself or herself in a legal matter, or who holds himself or herself out as someone who offers that service or has that authority, or a corporation, partnership, association, or other entity that employs or contracts with any person who is not otherwise exempted who, as part of his or her responsibilities, provides, or assists in providing, or offers to provide, or offers to assist in providing, for compensation, any self-help service to a member of the public who is representing himself or herself in a legal matter or holds himself or herself out as someone who offers that service or has that authority.[5]
Future
As the preparation of legal documents becomes more and more computerized, the function of non-attorney document preparers has become less dependent upon the preparer's individual skills, and more upon the quality of their software. By the same token, the continued increase of the availability of document software, legal aid websites, and the like, make it more and more likely that persons with some level of computer skills will not need even the limited assistance offered by LDAs, to prepare competent and quality legal documents. In fact, in the late 1990s, the Texas Bar Association, recognizing the threat that this trend represents to the pocketbooks of lawyers, sued Nolo Press, the country's leading publisher of self-help books and software, for Practicing Law Without a License. Ultimately, they were unsuccessful, as the Texas Legislature passed a law which clearly established that the selling books and software on legal subjects could not be considered practicing law.