ABSTRACT
UNREPRESENTED litigants are flooding the courts. In the “poor people’s courts,” civil cases involving at least one unrepresented litigant are far more common than cases in which both sides are represented by counsel.1 This phenomenon is hardly surprising, given widespread reports that over eighty percent of the legal needs of the poor and working poor currently are unmet in the United States.2 Judges, clerks, and lawyers bemoan the difficulties that unrepresented litigants cause for other participants in the legal system.3
