Representing Yourself in Court 101 – Lesson #1: Walk away if you can.
Lady Justice doesn’t like Self-Represented Litigants
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
So you want justice, and you want it badly enough that you are willing to represent yourself in court – without a lawyer.
What I really want you to understand is this: walking away from court is often the best decision you can make, whether you have a lawyer or not. If you are self-represented though, walking away is almost always the best decision.
There’s a tough reality to representing yourself that you don’t know about, even if you have previous experience in court with your lawyer beside you. As a self-represented litigant, you WILL be abused by opposing lawyers. You WILL be abused by court staff and by judges.
And, like the vast majority of self-represented litigants, you will likely lose your case. You may find yourself having to pay legal costs to the other side – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars or more. Or, like me, you may end up doing several months in prison even though your case is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal charge.
You have no idea about what you are getting into, but…
Maybe you are forced to represent yourself in court. Perhaps you are being sued and the other side won’t settle. Maybe your children or your home are at stake and you can’t walk away, but you have no money to hire a lawyer.
If you must represent yourself, you have a difficult path ahead. You’ll have to work hard to learn the law, and to learn the written and unwritten rules of litigation. Don’t let your case overwhelm what is really important in your life.
Representing Yourself in Court 101
My new video series covers some of the general information you’ll need to represent yourself in court. We’ll also look at some topics the legal community doesn’t like to talk about, such as the common dirty tricks that abusive lawyers reserve for those who don’t have a lawyer.
Lesson #1 in the series is titled ‘Walk away – if you can’.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I believe we need to attack those lawyers with an equal dose of common sense and put that QC at the end of their name to shame. They want to drag it out..go right ahead…if you represent yourself then it doesn’t really matter how long they drag it out. You need to attack them not with dirty tactics but with what they fail to possess…common sense.
What’s the next lesson please?
Mr Best I urge you to send this piece to the Prime Minister and tot his justice minister. Both of them are on another planet