People sometimes wonder about the legitimacy of the legal Document Preparation industry. Because document preparers are not licensed by the State of Florida in any way and there are no specific criteria to be a legal document preparer some people think that anyone can just decide to become a legal document preparer. Technically that's true, but there's a lot more to it then just proclaiming yourself to be a legal document preparer.
The Florida Association of Legal Document Preparers - FALDP, has member document preparers who have years of experience working for attorneys and cumulatively have a wealth of background, experience, and knowledge they use to help consumers.
Sometimes when a prospective member contacts us, one of their questions is whether the market is saturated with document preparers. They want to know whether it is a good idea for them to pursue a business as a legal document preparer, and whether the field is too crowded. My answer is always no, there is a lot of room for growth in our industry -- there are many many consumers who are under served.
No one seems to keep detailed statistics about pro se litigants - who is pro se; the number of consumers who proceed pro se; their reasons; and their success rates. We have maintained a survey for pro se litigants on our website. And we've compiled some responses to the survey, that might shed some light on just these questions. For example in our survey we found that most of the responders were females aged 50 to 65 who found the survey online. The survey is on our website – www,faldp.org - and we have done little or nothing to promote the survey until recently. We found that of those responders 45% were college-educated with English as their native language. Almost 43% were involved in or dealing with a civil case and of those 60% were defendants. In other words, they were involved in a court case, not by choice, but to defend themselves.
25% researched online before deciding to proceed pro se; and 16% consulted with an attorney before deciding to proceed pro se. Most striking, however, was that 35% of the survey responders stated that they were proceeding pro se because they could not afford an attorney. This underlines the pervasive Justice Gap, the difference between those who can and those who cannot afford an attorney. And the implication that for those who cannot afford an attorney, no justice is possible.
We maintain our website in part to educate consumers about the types of issues that they may have encountered like family law, bankruptcy, and civil matters. We also maintain our website to support the legal Document Preparation Industry as a whole.
In order to help our members in document preparers grow and expand their businesses, we offer online legal Document Preparation training courses. And, we have bundled are courses together into what we call our All Course Bundle which consists of 16 online legal Document Preparation training courses. Our courses are available to anyone, you don't need to be a member of our association or even a document preparer to take our courses.
The price for the 16 course bundle, the All Course Bundle $2399... This offer represents substantial savings compared to taking all of our courses one by one.
Call – 800-515-0496; Email staff@faldp.org; Visit – www.FALDP.org
