{"id":423,"date":"2006-12-27T19:28:29","date_gmt":"2006-12-27T23:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/12\/27\/how-many-pro-se-litigants\/"},"modified":"2006-12-27T19:53:07","modified_gmt":"2006-12-27T23:53:07","slug":"how-many-pro-se-litigants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/12\/27\/how-many-pro-se-litigants\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Pro Se Litigants?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How many cases are being handled by people without lawyers? The answer varies by state and by type of case. Madelynn Herman, a researcher at the National Center for State Courts, summarized a number of studies in a memorandum, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncsconline.org\/WC\/Publications\/Memos\/ProSeStatsMemo.htm\">Pro Se: Self-Represented Litigants, Pro Se Statistics<\/a>,&#8221; Sept. 25, 2006.<\/p>\n<p>A large number of <strong>domestic relations cases<\/strong> have at least one party who is not represented by an attorney. Here are some percentages (with the jurisdiction and date of the study in parentheses):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>49% of petitioners and 81% of respondents (Utah 2006)<\/li>\n<li>at least one party in almost 70% of cases (New Hampshire 2004)<\/li>\n<li>67% of petitioners at time of filing, 80% at time of disposition (California 2004)<\/li>\n<li>73% (Florida 2001)<\/li>\n<li>70% (Wisconsin 2000)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While people have a right to represent themselves, there are certainly many people who represent themselves only because they don&#8217;t have the financial resources to hire someone. A case currently in the Washington Court of Appeals addresses whether a woman should have had court-appointed counsel in a proceeding at which she lost custody of her children. The Washington State Bar Association is considering whether to file an amicus brief in the case, <em>In re Marriage of King<\/em>. (See <a href=\"http:\/\/trialadnotes.blogspot.com\/2006\/10\/wsba-to-be-amicus-to-ms-king.html\">Trial Ad Notes post<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Small claims courts<\/strong> are set up for people to handle their own cases. In fact, in some matters, people <em>may not<\/em> be represented. So it&#8217;s not surprising that a study in Utah (2006) found 99% of the petitioners and 99% of respondents in small claims court were self-represented.<\/p>\n<p>For <strong>civil cases overall<\/strong>, a New Hampshire study (2004) found at least one party was self-represented in 85% of cases in district court and 48% of cases in superior court.<\/p>\n<p>A California study (2004) reported <strong>4.3 million self-represented court users<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How many cases are being handled by people without lawyers? The answer varies by state and by type of case. Madelynn Herman, a researcher at the National Center for State Courts, summarized a number of studies in a memorandum, &#8220;Pro Se: Self-Represented Litigants, Pro Se Statistics,&#8221; Sept. 25, 2006. A large number of domestic relations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[898],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studies-reports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}