One of the most important things I’ve learned in legal practice and in life can be summed in this little axiom: “You always get what you pay for.”
I personally know its true. On a camping trip a couple of years back I knew that I needed to get a tent. Like everyone else on Earth, I had too little time to spend it researching the differences between tents and what the benefits were of one tent over another. I thought to myself : “A tent’s a tent right?” A couple of days before I left for camping I hurriedly ran into a Wal-Mart and picked up the cheapest tent they had. I assumed the tent would get me through a couple of days of camping and was sure I would be fine. Well after four straight days of rain, I had realized I had made a mistake. As I returned home, eager to not be sleeping in a puddle and excited to dry off everything I had brought with me, I couldn’t help but wish I had put more time and effort into my tent search.
The story above isn’t meant to be an appeal to paying exorbitant prices for things we don’t need. I didn’t need a $600 tent to keep me dry during my trip. What I did need was a quality tent. What I should have done was put in the time necessary to research and find a quality tent I could afford. By cutting corners I ended up being miserable for 4 days in the woods of Maine, but it did teach me a good lesson: “You get what you pay for.”
This axiom can be applied to almost any situation in life. As an attorney, I see it all the time with regards to citizens before the court. Since the early 90’s more and more people have gone to court with no one representing them. These “pro-se” litigants as the court calls them are trying to save money by representing themselves in whatever dispute lead them to court in the first place.
Pro-Se litigants are especially prevalent in Probate and Family and the housing courts. Pro-Se Litigants often appear in paternity, contempt, modification and divorce proceedings. While attempting to save money, the Pro-Se Litigants are impacting their case before they ever step foot in front of a judge. The mystic of the courtroom is not a wives tale told by lawyers to scare off potential pro-se litigants, courtroom etiquette, rules of evidence, discovery procedures and deadlines are all issues that take lawyers years to learn. A pro-se litigants inexperience with these procedures slow down court proceedings and the legal work done outside the courtroom.
Worst of all, a majority of Pro-Se litigants are unable to clearly understand the nuances of the substantive legal issues that are being presented against them. Much like the buying of a tent, or the building of a car, so many different theories and materials go into a lawsuit that without the proper time expended on research and learning, it can be impossible to figure out what the substantive legal issues even are.
But realistically most people represent themselves because of the assumption that hiring an attorney would be far and above the cost of anything they can afford. In the legal community around the country, a conversation has broken out about how to make legal service more affordable in an effort help pro-se litigants get legal counsel and improve their chances of successfully navigating whatever dispute brought them into the legal process in the first place.
New billing practices have moved away from charging clients by the hour and have introduced the idea of flat fee billing. This allows clients to be free from the worry that their case will rack up endless legal fees and allows them to focus on finding attorneys who are affordable and in their price range. At our firm, we strive to help every client and we don’t charge hourly rates at all, instead focusing on flat fee billing for each service we offer. If you find yourself in a situation where you are facing a legal dispute and you don’t think you can afford a lawyer, please give us a call or send us an email. We can work with you to make almost any legal service we can provide affordable and so that you don’t need to worry about going into court without the experience and knowledge you’ll need to win your case.
If I had a chance to go back and find myself in that Wal-Mart, I would have told myself to leave Wal-mart and to find a local camping store where I could talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. The real moral to my story isn’t about how much the tent would have cost, but it’s about doing the proper legwork and research to find someone who was an expert and could tell me what I needed to know so that I could have stayed dry.