A legal document assistant (LDA, also known as "document technician", "legal document preparer", "legal technician", "online legal document provider" or "legal document clerk") in the United States is a person who is a non-lawyer but authorized to assist with the preparation of

legal instrument Legal instrument is a law, legal term of art that is used for any formally executed written document that can be formally attributed to its author, records and formally expresses a legally enforceable act, process, or contractual duty, obligation ...

s. Unlike a

paralegal A paralegal, also known as a legal assistant or paralegal specialist, is a legal professional who performs tasks that require knowledge of legal concepts but not the full expertise of a lawyer with an admission to practice law. The market for p ...

, legal document assistants do not work under the supervision of an attorney. The existence of LDAs is a phenomenon in US due to the strict licensing laws for attorneys compared to elsewhere in the world. The job was created by using the doctrine of ''pro se'' to enable someone to help another to prepare a legal document. In all America's states except for Louisiana and Puerto Rico, only an attorney can advise and draft a legal document for someone. With the self-help ''pro se'' concept and stock legal forms, the Legal Document Preparer profession was arise. The role of a Legal Document Assistant varies significantly across legal jurisdictions. The job 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 A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

or scrivener. The terms "legal scrivener" and "independent

" were commonly used in the US from the late 1970s until 1994. In that year, the Bankruptcy Reform Act was signed into law by President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

. 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 US LDAs who assisted with

bankruptcies Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

to search for new terms to describe their profession. Although

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

became the first state to formally regulate LDAs, the first licensing proposal was the Oregon Scrivener's Act, introduced in the

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

legislature in 1985. In 2003,

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

began certifying individuals and businesses who prepare documents through its "Legal Document Preparer Program". as ''certified legal document preparers'' (CLDP).

California

While many LDAs have paralegal education and experience, in California they are not the same as paralegals. Under California law, a

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.

Louisiana

Certain types of legal documents can be drafted by a

notary public A notary public ( notary or public notary; notaries public) of the common law is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with general financial transactions, estates, deeds, powers- ...

in the State of Louisiana. Louisiana notaries public prepare and draft legal documents of a noncontentious nature (i.e. not for court cases) such as wills, trusts, marriage contracts, articles of incorporation, estate inventories, mortgages, real estate sales contracts, powers of attorney, etc. Aside from drafting, they are also authorized to make inventories, property descriptions, take company minutes, and appraise and convey real estate. Louisiana, along with Puerto Rico, have this exception because prior to inclusion in the United States, both were (and continue to be) under the civil law

legal system A legal system is a set of legal norms and institutions and processes by which those norms are applied, often within a particular jurisdiction or community. It may also be referred to as a legal order. The comparative study of legal systems is th ...

. Under civil law, notaries are lawyers, which is why in Louisiana notaries are appointed for life and used to be licensed before the advent of practice of law statutes in the 1930s. Louisiana notaries public are not required to be attorneys or otherwise trained in law; however, they do have to pass an extensive exam on notarial law (i.e., the areas of law a notary can draft for - property law, estate law, family law, etc.), they must sign and witness the signing of the documents they draft ( notarial acts), and register and file those documents with the local court.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legal Document Assistant Legal professions Legal documents