A verified association for people representing themselves.
The American Association for Pro Se Litigants is being built by NORA Foundation to give self-represented litigants a verified, evidence-aware civic home. Membership is for non-attorneys only. Identity verification and eligibility review are required.
Not a law firm. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship.
Launch control
Pre-registration openIdentity verification
Stripe Identity session + manual review
72%
Non-attorney eligibility
Attestation + bar-status conflict screening
55%
Donation rail
One-time and recurring funding
84%
Evidence education layer
NORA-guided public explainer workflows
38%
Mission
Build power without pretending to be counsel.
AAPS-L is designed as a verified civic association for self-represented litigants: education, identity, evidence literacy, and collective infrastructure — with legal-advice boundaries made explicit.
For self-represented litigants
A public-interest association for people navigating litigation without counsel.
No attorneys allowed
Membership is reserved for non-attorneys. Attorney participation belongs in advisory, public, or separately governed channels.
Verified identity
Applicants consent to identity verification and eligibility review before activation.
Privacy-first posture
Sensitive data must be minimized, stored carefully, and separated from public-facing marketing content.
NORA infrastructure
The initiative funds verified evidence literacy, provenance, and AI-boundary education.
Trust over hype
Every product claim should remain bounded, auditable, and explicit about what the platform does not do.
Verification
No anonymous membership. No attorney infiltration.
The launch flow is intentionally gated: pre-registration, identity verification, attorney-exclusion attestation, and manual eligibility review.
Step 1
Pre-registration
Applicant supplies identifying information, pro se status, case posture, and policy acknowledgments.
Step 2
Identity verification
Applicant starts a Stripe Identity session from the registration flow.
Step 3
Attorney exclusion review
The system captures a sworn attestation and queues manual review for bar/license conflicts.
Step 4
Admin decision
Approved, waitlisted, rejected, or more-information-required status is recorded with reason codes.
Step 5
Member activation
Only verified, eligible non-attorney applicants are activated when membership launches.
Membership policy
For pro se litigants. Not attorneys.
The platform should be strict about who it serves. Attorneys, firms, legal vendors, and institutional proxies should not enter member-only spaces.
- Applicant must be a natural person, not a law firm, legal vendor, or agency surrogate.
- Applicant must not be admitted, licensed, or actively practicing as an attorney in any jurisdiction.
- Applicant must consent to identity verification and manual eligibility review.
- Applicant must acknowledge that the association does not provide legal advice or representation.
- Applicant must agree not to use the platform to impersonate another person, harass, dox, or evade court orders.
Generative UI
An explainer layer that renders structured answers.
The scaffold includes a structured generative UI component now, and an AI SDK route for production model-backed responses once keys and policies are configured.
NORA launch copilot
Structured AI-style UI for eligibility, funding, and roadmap explanations.
Choose a prompt. In production this component can be upgraded to model-driven generative UI using Vercel AI SDK tools that return React-renderable structured payloads.
Funding roadmap
What donations intend to launch.
Funding priorities are explicit: verification, secure intake, donations, education, governance, and NORA evidence infrastructure.
Verified pre-registration
Launch the public site, identity verification, pro se eligibility review, donation rails, privacy notices, and administrative review tooling.
Member intake and evidence education
Build guided onboarding, self-represented litigation checklists, admissibility primers, and verified member communication infrastructure.
NORA-assisted evidence infrastructure
Fund the public-interest technical layer: provenance, AI extraction boundaries, verifiable records, and anti-hallucination evidence workflows.
Public launch and governance
Establish governance, audits, moderation, state-by-state legal review, charitable solicitation compliance, and member support operations.
Help build the association before the need gets worse.
Pre-register as a future member or fund the launch as a supporter. Identity verification is required for membership activation.