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PRO SE LITIGANTS: THE PROBLEM By Judge
(retired) Arthur M. Copyright
2000 The explosion of litigation over the last
decade cannot be blamed on the legal profession and overzealous lawyers as some
would claim. The causes are much deeper and more reflective of the moral and
cultural environment of the entire country. Part of the problem can be traced
to the increasing diversity and unconnected ness of the countries communities.
As the notion of community has disappeared from major population centers people
have resorted to the courts to resolve their differences rather than
traditional community structures of family, church, and school. Part of this
dynamic may also be attributed to a growing desire for privacy and anonymity in
major urban population centers. One needs to look no farther than pro se
litigation to discover that the legal profession is not the cause of the
communities run to the courthouse to solve almost every problem. Indeed many
complain that the legal profession is not meeting the legal needs of the
country. Those voices attribute this growing list of unmet legal needs mainly
to the overpricing of legal services. UNMET NEED FOR LEGAL SERVICES In a speech before the 40th Annual Conference
of the American Judges Association in September Roger Warren, President of the
National Center for State Courts and a former trial judge captured the
countries attitudes when he said, “More than two thirds of those surveyed felt
that it was not affordable to bring a case to court. Eighty-seven percent of
the respondents indicated that the cost of lawyers contributred ‘a lot’ to the
cost of going to court; more than a majority of respondents said that the
complexity of the law, and the slow pace of litigation also contributeds ‘a
lot’ to the cost of going to court. Forty- four percent felt that the courts
were ‘out of touch’ with what’s going on in hteir communities; more than half
of the Hispanic respondents, and two=thirds of African-American respondents,
felt courts were’ out of touch’ with their communities. © 2002 ... by Arthur M.
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