>I've seen people represent themselves. It's not a
>pretty sight.
>
>I love how you guys go all free market on us when the
>law is involved. I presume you have the same feeling
>about medical doctors. Wht shouls lawyers have to be
>licensed? It's only your money and your freedom that
>is at stake. The market will weed out the bad
>unlicensed offerets of legal advice, just like it
>weeds out the bad licensed ones. Oops. I forget. It
>doesn't. Well, who cares. Lawyers are evil. They take
>stuff thst everyone knows would be very simple if left
>common sense, like the rules we live by, and use their
>monopoply to make it all complicated so you have to
>use them. They are wicked and should be prohibited.
Thing about free markets is that they tend irresistably towards monopoly. But I'm not going all free market on you poor lawyers, I'm just commenting on the rather feudal way the legal profession protects its right to charge a toll on anyone who wants to access the legal system.
Comparisons with doctors are not entirely apt. You are entitled to consult someone who practices alternative medicine, be it a crystal quack or herbal witch-doctor. There's no law against it.
What's more, I've never heard of a doctor presuming to charge a client an enormous hourly charge to go off to the library for many hours to educate themselves about the client's medical problem. Only lawyers suffer from the delusion that their clients should expect to be bled several hundred dollars an hour by an "expert" undertaking on-the-job training. If a doctor tried that, he would have his heart ripped from his chest. A doctor has to know how to perform the operation before he's allowed to do it, let alone allowed to charge for it.
Representing yourself is, in some cases, legal. In other cases it isn't. In any event, as you point out, not everyone is up to representing themselves.
Though it depends on how much money you have whether the quality of legal representation you can afford will turn out to be better than self-representation. Sometimes it is better to have a fool for a client than to have a fool for a lawyer. Personally I could never afford the sort of lawyer who would do a better job than I could do myself. A top lawyer would be worth the money, but I simply don't have the money so its moot. A crap lawyer is worse than no lawyer. But because of the system, they get to charge ridiculous prices.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas