“Do you think I need a lawyer?”
People ask me that question regularly and I usually give the standard answer they teach us in law school: “It depends.” Not every legal issue requires an attorney’s advice. When I clerked for a judge in Hennepin County, I saw plenty of people appear before the court pro se. Sometimes, people can represent themselves just fine. But in many cases, people would have been better served by having a lawyer at their side. But lawyers can be expensive and, as the Times points out, the recession is forcing more people to represent themselves whether they want to or not.
The judge for whom I clerked did his best to guide pro se parties through the hearing process and to ensure that they don’t get ambushed by opposing counsel. But judges aren’t advocates; I can remember the pained expression on my judges’s face as we watched a confused and sometimes terrified pro se individual struggle to present his or her side of the case. My own rule of thumb: if the other side is represented by counsel, do whatever you can to obtain representation.
