Legal document assistant

A legal document assistant (LDA, also commonly known as "document technician," "legal document preparer," "legal technician," "online legal document provider" and "legal document clerk") in the United States is a non-lawyer authorized to assist with the preparation of legal instruments. Unlike a paralegal, legal document assistants do not work under the supervision of an attorney.

A Legal Document Assistant is an American phenomenon created in response to the most strict licensing laws for attorneys in the world. The job was created by using the doctrine of pro se to enable someone to help another prepare a legal document. Except for Louisiana and Puerto Rico, in the United States only an attorney can advise and draft a legal document for another. With the self-help pro se concept and stock legal forms the Legal Document Preparer profession was born.

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.

Many LDAs view their professional history as descending directly from that of the scribe or scrivener. The terms "legal scrivener" and "independent paralegal" 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. 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 to search for new terms to describe their profession.

Although California became the first state to formally regulate LDAs, the first licensing proposal was the Oregon Scrivener's Act, introduced in the Oregon legislature in 1985. In 2003, Arizona began certifying individuals and businesses who prepare documents through its "Legal Document Preparer Program". as certified legal document preparers (CLDP).

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