Sunday, April 12, 2009
COURTS BEING CLOGGED BY PEOPLE REPRESENTING THEMSELVES
Last fall we referenced the article More Americans serving as their own lawyers in our post of the same name MORE AMERICANS SERVING AS THEIR OWN LAWYERS. And now The New York Times has reported in In a Downturn, More Act as Their Own Lawyers:
Financially pressed people...are representing themselves more and more in court, according to judges, lawyers and courthouse officials across the country, raising questions of how just the outcomes are and clogging courthouses already facing their own budget woes as clerks spend more time helping people unfamiliar with forms, filings and fees.We all know that the numbers are through the roof,” said James K. Borbely, a circuit court judge in Vermilion County, Ill. “You just look at the courtrooms.”Judges complain that people miss deadlines, fail to bring the right documents or evidence and are simply unprepared for legal proceedings. Such mistakes make it more likely they will fare poorly — no matter the merit of their cases.
Reliable numbers for people representing themselves in noncriminal cases are hard to come by. Nationally there is no tracking system, and each state’s court system follows its own rules. Many people hire a lawyer for one phase of a proceeding but then drop them later. (In criminal cases, of course, defendants have a right to an appointed lawyer.)
Records of New York’s family courts, in which a vast majority of people appear without a lawyer, are imperfect. But in the first six weeks of this year, nearly 95 percent of litigants in paternity and support cases did not have a lawyer, compared with 88 percent in all of 2008 (emphasis added).
We wonder if the New York statistics on unrepresented litigants in paternity and child support cases holds true across the country. If so, this represents an opportunity for some enterprising young lawyers who are familiar with the concept of "price point" and may be willing to give some thought to restructuring their fee schedules in order to capture some of this market. More important, given the limited amount of constitutional protections afforded to the putative fathers in paternity and child support cases, we suspect that there are thousands of men in this country who have been labeled "Deadbeat Dads" who are neither deadbeats nor dads.
Labels: "Deadbeat Dads", Family Court Backlog, Sixth Amendment
