Representing Yourself

Assessing Your Situation

It's not easy to decide whether to represent yourself. Before you make a decision, take some time to consider whether your personality, work ethic, and lifestyle are suited for the task ahead. The following questions should help you assess your situation:

• Do you have the time to learn the substantive and procedural aspects of the laws involved?

• Is your case relatively straightforward?

One way to make this determination is to attend a free legal clinic in your area. Call the clerk's office of your local court and ask if there are free legal clinics or a Volunteer Lawyer for a Day program. If there is one, attend it and discuss your case with the lawyer present. You should come away understanding more about the complexity of your case and whether or not you feel able to represent yourself.

• Do you feel comfortable negotiating with the opposing party (or the lawyer representing the opposing party)

• Can you clearly express yourself in writing and remain emotionally detached from the legal process?

• Are you organized in your record-keeping?

• If your case involves going to court, are you willing to:

• speak in public?
• understand the legal aspects of your case well enough to explain it to a judge?
• meet deadlines?
• perform legal research and understand court rules, cases, and statutes?
• produce documents to file in court?
• take the time and effort to understand and respond promptly to papers issued by the court?
• respond to papers received from the opposing party?
• free up time in your schedule to attend court hearings?

What it Means to Represent Yourself in a Legal Proceeding

If you are involved in litigation and decide to represent yourself, you will be referred to as a pro se litigant. While a court will hold you to the same standards as a lawyer, most courts will be less stringent with mistakes made by pro se litigants, and might even have a staff attorney at the courthouse to guide you through some of the procedural requirements. However, not all courts are helpful and can in fact be hostile to pro se litigants. Keep in mind that should you come to a point during the legal proceedings where you would prefer to be represented by a lawyer, you may have the option to do so.

Where to Find Help

In addition to the clerk's office mentioned above, there are several nonprofit institutions and other organizations that may be able to help with your case and provide guidance and resources. In extremely rare cases, they may even offer to represent you in court.

Other good resources include legal form books. Form books contain legal forms that lawyers use in drafting a legal document. Legal forms come in templates with suggested language and must be tailored to fit the situation. There are many types of legal forms available, categorized by subject, procedure, court, or state. Bear in mind that the forms are not meant to be used as boilerplate language. You will need to perform additional research to make sure that the form is appropriate to the situation and complies with current law. Here are some sites that have legal forms:

• Findlaw Forms
• LawInfo.com's Free Legal Forms
• The 'Lectric Law Library Forms Room
• LexisOne List of Free Forms
• Internet Legal Research Group's Public Legal Forms
• US Court Forms
• US Legal Forms
• Washlaw Legal Forms

You can also visit your local law library (at a law school or courthouse) to find legal form books.

Additionally Nolo.com is another wonderful legal resource. Nolo publishes print, software, and online manuals covering a wide variety of legal issues, including materials on taxes, employment, intellectual property, and how to operate a small business. The publications are written for the layperson and are terrific do-it-yourself legal guides.

Hiring a Lawyer

Like doctors and other professionals, lawyers range from general practitioners to specialists. Typically, lawyers who offer general legal services concentrate on legal issues concerning the general public—for example, wills or real estate transactions. However, if you are seeking a lawyer because of legal problem associated with your online activities, you should look for a specialist who focuses on media law or intellectual property issues on the Internet. If you want to set up a business, you should find a lawyer with experience in corporate and tax matters.

Finding the right lawyer

There are several ways to find a lawyer:

• Personal Recommendations

The best way to find a good lawyer is by word-of-mouth. Ask your family, friends, or colleagues for recommendations. If you previously hired a lawyer for another situation, ask her for references in the field you need. Don't stop at getting names and contact information; press the referrer for reasons why he thinks the lawyer is good.

• Bar Associations and Other Organizations

Your state or county bar association will likely have a referral service that matches your legal problem with an appropriate lawyer. Visit the American Bar Association's Consumer Guide to Legal Help to find bar associations in your state. Additionally, other types of organizations are focused around a specialty rather than geography. For example, the Media Law Resource Center provides a list of their law firm members who specialize in media law, including First Amendment and intellectual property law. (Organizations that might provide legal representation without a fee are covered under the Nonprofit Legal Assistance section of this guide.)

• Advertisements and the Yellow Pages

You may come across advertisements for a lawyer's services through tv, radio, magazines, newspapers, websites, or phonebooks. Remember that the advertisement has little to do with the lawyer's abilities. You should thoroughly research the lawyer by following the steps outlined below.

• Your Insurance Company

If someone has brought a lawsuit against you, check with your insurance company to see if you have liability insurance for the situation at hand. If you do, your insurance company should provide you with the necessary legal defense and indemnify you if any money needs to be paid to the other party. In this case, you will be represented by the lawyer from the insurance company and will not need to seek a lawyer of your own.

Once you have a list of lawyers, research them as much as possible. The lawyer's education background and the firm that the lawyer is associated with may be an indication of the quality of a lawyer's practice, but the best indicator of a lawyer's service is experience. Additionally, check your list of lawyers against a legal directory, a resource that contains peer ratings of lawyers, to see the opinions of others in the legal community. Martindale Hubbell is a highly regarded legal directory and is available online.

Initial Meeting With a Lawyer

Once you're comfortable with your list, call each lawyer to set up an initial meeting. Apart from the where's and when's of the meeting, you should make sure to find out:

• approximately how long the meeting will take
• what documents you should bring
• whether the lawyer charges for an initial meeting (and if so, the amount and method of payment)
• whether the lawyer can provide you with a list of references from current or former clients

You should prepare so that the meeting stays focused, allowing you to gauge the lawyer's response to your situation.

• Gather all documents pertaining to the situation in a file. This includes printouts of any relevant emails and webpages. Additionally, note dates and times you received each document.

• Write down everything you know about the situation, including:

• the nature of the actions that triggered the situation
• when and how you received any documents about the situation
• any relevant interactions you’ve had with anyone involved in the matter

The act of writing the summary allows you to: record events you may forget during the conversation; better understand your position; and focus your conversation with your prospective lawyer. If there is a lawsuit, you may be required to disclose this summary to the other side, so keep to the facts and do not include your opinions.

• Prepare a list of questions. The lawyer will ask you a lot of questions to help her evaluate the strengths of your case; you should do the same to evaluate the lawyer. Alexander Hawes, LLP has a terrific approach to identifying the information you need, as does the Monroe County Bar Association.

Understanding Legal Fees

The lawyer should go over her fee arrangement during your initial meeting. Bills may run high and you must understand the various fee structures to avoid unpleasant surprises.

There are several ways you may be billed for a lawyer's services:

• Hourly fee: The most common fee structure, an hourly fee is a person's hourly rate times the hours spent working on your case. Hourly rates will probably vary from lawyer to lawyer within a law firm, and from lawyer to non-lawyer. If money is an issue, ask whether a junior lawyer can work on the case while a senior lawyer reviews the final product. Make sure to get a breakdown of the hourly rates for each person who will work on your case, and an estimate on the length of time each person will spend on your case. The amount of work put into a case varies and it's impossible to project a definitive amount; however, a good lawyer should be able to give you a ballpark figure based on her prior experience.

• Retainer Fee: A retainer is an advance payment, or down payment, to be applied towards the hourly fees earned later. (Note: in some cases, a retainer fee also refers to the amount paid to an attorney on a regular basis to keep the attorney available for handling legal services.)

• Fixed fee: A fixed fee is a flat amount that covers a specific legal service. For example, if you need help starting your business, a lawyer may charge you a fixed fee for helping you to incorporate.

• Contingency fee: In a contingency fee arrangement, the lawyer only gets paid if she is successful in getting you an award of damages, whether through trial or settlement. A lawyer's portion of the award is usually a fixed percentage of the total amount, depending upon the type of case involved.

• Mixed Fee: A mixed fee arrangement combines contingency and hourly fees.

• Costs: Fees go to the lawyer for her work, while costs cover the payments incidental to those services. For example, if you've hired a lawyer to help you incorporate your business, one cost will be the filing fee for the articles of incorporation. For purposes of a lawsuit, talk to the lawyer about advances for the costs associated with litigation.

The First Meeting

Plan to arrive 5 minutes early so that you can be ready as soon as the meeting starts. Bring your summary and file of documents. As you explain the situation be candid. Remember, the lawyer needs all of the information, good and bad, to assess your case and give you a useful road map of what lies ahead. Except in rare cases, lawyers are bound by professional rules to keep the initial meeting confidential, so you should not feel constrained. You should already know how long the meeting will last, so keep an eye on the time and make sure the lawyer addresses all of your questions.

Post-Meeting

After you've met with a few lawyers, compare how they approached your situation and think about whose counsel you valued the most. If you met with a lawyer who was personally recommended to you, don't be surprised if you don't like her as much as the recommender did. There are many different styles of lawyering, and you may not be as comfortable with some as you are with others.

If there are one or two lawyers with whom you connected, call their references and speak to former clients. Once you're comfortable making the decision to hire a lawyer, make sure you have a written fee agreement to avoid billing surprises.

Lastly, don't lose touch with your case just because you have hired a lawyer. Your lawyer works for you. You need to set the goals, and your lawyer will use her legal expertise to help you achieve them. The only way for you to make decisions about your case is to stay informed.

Nonprofit Legal Assistance

Many lawyers and legal organizations provide pro bono work. In common usage pro bono refers to volunteer work done for the public good. In the legal field, lawyers who do pro bono work take cases for those who are disadvantaged and unable to secure legal assistance. Additionally, legal advocacy organizations (organizations that take on cases) usually provide pro bono representation for their clients.

There are a number of nonprofit institutions and other organizations that may be able to represent you or provide other legal assistance. Should the organization offer to represent you in court, you will be in the enviable position of enjoying free legal work done by lawyers passionately committed to the underlying causes of your situation. Note that these lawyers may be working on your individual case because they want to break new legal ground or advance the law in a particular way to benefit society as a whole. Thus, you will want to make your individual goals clear to them. More often than not, they will share your goals and you'll be able to forge ahead.

See the Nonprofit Legal Assistance Organizations by State section for organizations in your state that may be of help. On a national level, here are some organizations whose work may be of interest (listed alphabetically):

• American Civil Liberties Union: An advocacy organization that focuses on individual rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, including First Amendment rights. The ACLU provides a list for all its affiliates in the country.


• Chilling Effects: A fantastic website that focuses on promoting the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to online activity. Contact Chilling Effects.


• Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP): We provide training and resources for individuals and organizations involved in citizen media. We also perform research and provide advocacy on free speech, newsgathering, intellectual property, and other legal issues related to online speech. Contact us!


• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): EFF is an advocacy organization dedicated to digital freedom. Specifically, EFF works on free speech, privacy, and consumer rights in the digital domain. Contact EFF.


• Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): A public interest research center focusing on the overlap of privacy issues, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. Contact EPIC.


• Fair Use Network: An initiative of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the Fair Use Network provides information about intellectual property law and supports fair use and other free expression safeguards within the law. The website also lists prominent public interest organizations and professional associations that provide guidance and referrals for people facing issues over speech, information, and fair use rights. Contact the Fair Use Network.


• The Freedom Forum: A foundation that works to promote free press, free speech, and newsroom diversity. Contact the Freedom Forum.


• Legal Aid Offices: Legal Aid organizations provide legal assistance to those who are unable to afford law representation. They are funded variously by private foundations, individual donors, or the federal, state and local governments. Pine Tree, a legal aid organization in Maine, lists legal aid offices by state.


• Media Blogger Association: An association focused on: promoting, protecting and educating its member-bloggers; supporting the development of citizen journalism; and helping to extend the power of the press. Contact the Media Blogger Association.


• Media Law Resource Center: Information clearinghouse that monitors developments in First Amendment law. Contact the Media Law Resource Center.


• National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE): An advocacy organization that provides support, to artists and arts communities to promote artistic freedom. The NCFE acts as a liaison between the arts community and the national civil liberties community, and also lists other similar organizations. Contact the First Amendment Project and the NCFE.


• National Lawyers Guild: An association of progressive lawyers, law students, paralegals, judges, legal secretaries, and community activists. Local chapters maintain attorney referral lines.  Contact the National Lawyers Guild here.


• Public Citizen: A consumer advocacy organization that represents consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts. One of its iniatives is to fight for free speech on the internet. Contact Public Citizen.


• Reporters Committee Freedom of Press: A nonprofit organization committed to providing free legal assistance to journalists. Contact the Reporters Committee Freedom of Press - Scroll to the bottom to find the Legal Defense Hotline.


• State Bar Associations: Many state bar associations set a recommended number of hours per year for lawyers to perform pro bono services. Your state bar association may have a referral list of lawyers who are willing to take on pro bono cases. The American Bar Association has a state-by-state listing for state and local bar associations.


• Student Press Law Center: A legal assistance agency that focuses on censorship in student news media. The Center provides free legal advice and also has an Attorney Referral Network of lawyers across the country who are available to provide free legal representation to local students when necessary. Contact Student Press Law Center.


• Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA): VLA provides free or cheap legal help for 'struggling' artists and other members of the arts communities. The New York VLA has a list of the VLA offices in the country with their contact information.