The trend is clear and it is toward de-lawyering.
Any regular person can intersect with other parts of government without a lawyer.
Ralph Warner, publisher of Nolo Press, the country's oldest publishing house for self-help legal texts. Representing oneself in court is a constitutional right in the United States, so anyone can represent himself or herself in court. However, pro se litigants run the gamut from inmates griping about prison dentists and waitresses filing suit against their bosses to impoverished pensioners quarreling with welfare officials over the amount of their monthly checks. According to estimates, as many as 90 percent of the people who appear for tenant disputes in New York City's housing courts show up without a lawyer, and in the city's federal courts, pro se cases accounted for nearly one of every five civil actions brought last year. A pro se litigant is a person who has undertaken the challenge of representing himself or herself in a civil case.