Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism.
For the last several years the National Self Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) has been studying Self Represented Litigants (SRLs) in Canada to determine why the number of SRLs continues to climb year after year.
http://www.2civility.org/the-facts-about-self-represented-litigants/
Why do mid-income families decide to self-represent? Simple arithmetic. In cases where the claim is for example, $30,000 (eg: new home defects), the cost of hiring an experienced lawyer, if you can find a firm not already representing builders, their lobby groups, or Tarion Warranty Corp., the daily fees for an experienced litigator can be $1,200 to $2,000+ for court time, excluding preparation, motions, disbursements, or pre-hearings. Often retainers are required. Paying these legal fees would wipe out any potential settlement the consumer might need to get his home fixed. Many consumers decide to self-represent because the numbers just don’t justify paying these legal fees, or engineers fees also on an hourly rate.
The claim level for Small Claims Court cases should be raised to $50,000, as recently done in Alberta. There should be more training for judges and lawyers in why consumers self-represent in the first place: money, money, and the third reason, money.
Many middle-class families have been forced to forget justice, and just fix the problem themselves. This however provides no deterrent to the wrong-doer. This is an access to justice problem for anyone who can use a calculator. A senior lawyer told me recently “for problems under $100,000, there’s no justice.” Nice.
Doesn’t anyone see a niche market here?
B.Captijn
Volunteer Consumer Advocate
Toronto
Reblogged this on CONSUMERS' REFORM TARION.
as well, if the courts do not even follow their own procedures ree evidence, like the dna issue. how can you defend yourself against false results when you cannot get access to the file? when if you did get the file, there is no regulatory body to provide recorded error rates for the last 20 or so years. there is NO STANDARDIZATION OF TESTING PROCEDURE that can be proven or even accessed. and with no clinical trials to prove the error rates claimed, how do you disprove that which has never been proven??? all of these issues are supposed to have been dealt with BEFORE this “evidence” is submitted to the courts., at least that is what the evidence act claims.. why are the courts not following their own evidence acts? corruption abounds