Our judicial system is known as an ‘adversarial’ one in most instances. There are two sides representing the interests of the state or plaintiff and the interests of the defendant. As you may imagine, the law is complex as is the process to access justice. This is why there are lawyers, people who specialize and receive extensive, ongoing training in legal practice. Not only is knowledge of the law, statutes, case law, and the language of the law necessary, many lay people are not familiar with the process to begin with. This is one of the reasons why defendants in criminal cases are legally entitled to zealous representation in their case.
With this in mind, do you believe that people should be allowed to self-represent? Do you think that there should be more resources dedicated to helping self-represented people participate in the judicial process (short of appointing them an attorney)? What kind of resources might those be? What do you think the consequences are of having one or two parties self-represented to the case outcome and the court process? What do you believe the benefits might be?