Seems like some comments are missing the forest for the trees. The reason they're common is that it's possible to create all programs with a tiny subset of inst

Seems like some comments are missing the forest for the trees. The reason they're common is that it's possible to create all programs with a tiny subset of instructions. And I don't think LEAs are common due to the cool tricks you can do with them, as commented here. They're common because they're a necessary part of that tiny subset, to be used for their actual intended us...calculating and loading effective addresses, whether it's just a label or it's a 'pointer arithmetic' operation, while not affecting the status register. It seems also to have been a convention, going back 30 years in assembly, to use LEA to load addresses referenced by labels, even though a MOV will allow it and even though it's effectively the same thing.