Mental and physical health problems linked to people forced to represent themselves in court

Nine out of 10 people who have been forced to represent themselves as ‘litigants in person’ in the family courts have suffered strain on their mental and physical health, a report by Citizens Advice has revealed.

The justice system is clearly not designed for laypeople to represent themselves - the law and the procedures involved are complex and require the expertise of a trained lawyer. Nonetheless people who have been denied a lawyer due to cuts to legal aid funding are now representing themselves in family courts in ever increasing numbers, often against a trained lawyer on the other side, even though this denial of basic legal advice is essentially the government abandoning the concept of equality before the law and enabling justice to be monopolised by those who can afford to pay.

As the Guardian reports, there has also been 30% rise in cases where neither side has access to lawyer, with 22% of those cases involving children. Many of these cases may involve domestic violence issues, where forcing a woman to face her abuser in court is clearly detrimental to both justice and the victim’s mental and physical health. This makes services which help people to negotiate the divorce court system such as CourtNav, developed by Citizens Advice and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, all the more essential - although the only way to truly restore justice for all will be to make lawyers available to the poorest in society once again.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “The demands of going to court without legal representation can put people’s jobs and health at risk. For people representing themselves in the family courts, whether in a divorce case or to keep the legal right to see their children, the workload can be unmanageable. In extreme cases people are quitting their jobs so they have the time to do research before going to court.”