AUSTIN - Nolo Press, the nation's largest publisher of self-help legal books and software, routinely urges its readers to take matters into their own hands. Now, its role as adviser is under scrutiny. Nolo says it is under investigation for possible violations of a Texas law against "unauthorized practice of law."

The Texas Supreme Court committee charged with investigating unauthorized practice cases refuses as a matter of course to confirm or deny any investigation.

But the Berkeley, Calif.-based Nolo has filled its Web site with documents it has exchanged with the Texas Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee. Nolo called the committee's actions "the first step toward widespread state censorship."

At the least, say Nolo and some legal experts, the review process may be pitting the state's interest in keeping untrained hucksters from practicing law against Nolo's right to free speech.

"Nobody has suggested that our stuff is dangerous or wrong," said Nolo publisher Ralph Warner. "They're just saying that anybody who publishes a book about legal things is in violation of the law. This hearing procedure is totally a kangaroo court."

Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee members say that Nolo has blown the issue out of proportion, and that the attention the company has attracted to its case could backfire.

"Nolo seems to be telling the universe about how unhappy they are, but I'm pretty convinced that Nolo Press doesn't understand what's going on here," said Houston lawyer Jim Bloom, who chairs the committee. "This is not about the First Amendment."

Nolo has published self-help materials since 1971 and sells 95 different products in Texas, including books and software designed to help the legal novice formulate a will, form a corporation or navigate the murky waters of tenant-landlord disputes.

The materials sold by the company are assembled and reviewed by an in-house team of 12 lawyers, Mr. Warner said.

Nolo has never been investigated for any alleged unauthorized practice, Mr. Warner said.

The Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, which will hear Nolo' s argument in an August investigative hearing in Dallas, has not specified which of Nolo's products might be under review, Mr. Warner said.

The committee has no power to ban books, Mr. Bloom said, but can decide to file a lawsuit against an offending party if it finds that the publisher's materials constitute unauthorized practice.

"The bottom line is there's plenty of resolution time before it gets to the hearing stage," said Mr. Bloom, who added that a lawsuit is not a foregone conclusion and that "about one case in every 15" investigated by the committee ends up in court. But in the past, such lawsuits in Texas have led to bans of legal self-help literature.

In 1992, Texas courts banned a book by a California man, You and Your Will: A Do-It-Yourself Manual, ruling that its contents constituted an unauthorized practice of law. The Nolo investigation perhaps signals a rising trend in unauthorized- practice cases nationwide, said Theresa Mehan Rudy, program director with the Washington, D.C., group Help Abolish Legal Tyranny.

Unauthorized practice committees, which exist in all states except Arizona, have lately stepped up their efforts against firms such as Nolo that publish legal self-help literature, said Ms. Rudv.

That has made some advocates of affordable legal services nervous.

"These types of publications perform a real service that the Bar doesn't perform and that lawyers can't afford to perform," said University of Houston law professor Richard Alderman, who has published several self-help legal books. "Without self-help information, many people would be left without any legal redress."

At the center of the Nolo dispute is the Texas Legislature's definition of unauthorized practice, which Nolo and committee members agree is so broad that the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee can sue almost anyone without a bar license for doing anything related to the practice of law.

"We take a pretty expansive view of what ... [the unauthorized practice of law] is," said Mark Ticer, the chairman of the Dallas Unauthorized Practice of Law Subcommittee. "But vilifying us is like going to the district attorney's office and saying, "I don't like the law.' We're just here to enforce it." Committee officials say the nine members of the state committee - six of them lawyers - protect consumers from incompetents selling bad legal advice.

Nolo says that unauthorized-practice laws are designed by lawyers for lawyers and are tried by lawyers bent on preserving their exclusive rights to increasingly expensive legal services.

"Lawyers ought not to be trying to police their own monopoly," said Stanford University law professor and legal ethics expert Deborah Rhode, who has studied unauthorized-practice cases nationwide. "Three years of law school and passage of a bar exam are not necessary to do form-processing work."

The Texas committee, which is appointed by the Texas Supreme Court and funded by the State Bar of Texas, contends that it's only logical for lawyers to regulate the practice of law.

"We have nonlawyers involved in the process," Mr. Bloom said. " Our mission is not to protect a lawyer's monopoly. Our job is to protect consumers from people who do not have law licenses."

Both Nolo and the investigating committee say that they're acting in the best interests of consumers, but their arguments also have a distinctly commercial ring to them: In Texas last year, Nolo sold almost $1 million in legal self-help materials, more than 10 percent of its $9 million in total sales, and second only to California in single-state sales. Mr. Warner said the case is about principles, not revenue.

"This case is raising everybody's blood pressure for a perfectly good reason: We don't ban books in America," he said.

David Snyder is an Austin free-lance writer. PHOTO(S): (The Dallas Morning News: Susan Chalifoux) Books published by Nolo Press, the nation's largest publisher of self-help legal books and software, apparently have raised concerns in Texas. At the center of the dispute is the Texas Legislature's definition of unauthorized practice, which Nolo and members of the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee agree is so broad that the panel can sue almost anyone without a bar license for doing anything related to practicing law.