How does representing oneself affect one&#39;s chance of winning a lawsuit? Statistically, how much less likely is a pro se litigant in &quot;regular&quot; court (i.e. not arbitration or small claims court) to win against a litigant with a lawyer than another litigant with a lawyer would be? For example, what percent of pro se plaintiffs or defendants have won lawsuits compared to those with lawyers?
australia Statistics are difficult to come by and straight comparisons are not valid: Greiner and Pattanayak’s observations about the difficulty in measuring the impact of self-representation on outcomes because of the trouble in separating the ‘hopeless, sure-win, or representation-makes-a-difference cases.' … whether lawyers change case outcomes is very difficult to determine empirically. There are many confounding factors, including what counts as a good outcome, how outcomes can be measured, the strength of the case, the quality of the lawyer, the ability of the litigant, the nature of the forum, the approach of the judge, and the complexity of the law on the issue. This 2018 report has the following info: in the Federal Administrative Appeals Tribunal unrepresented persons were successful 22.5% and represented 51.3% the County Court of Victoria had 43 Judicial Registrar reviews of which 23 settled - 14 with representation, 9 without. the Supreme Court of Queensland said SRL were successful in 4.9% of civil and 18.9% of criminal appeals and there was, therefore, a ‘need for increased legal aid funding and pro bono assistance at appellate level’. The High Court of Australia kept statistics between 1992-93 and 2005-06: 1.5% of SRL succeeded in their appeals compared with 27.7% of represented. The report surveys united-states outcomes: Sandefur’s meta-analysis of such US studies concluded that parties are more likely to win when legally represented but the relative advantage of being legally represented or an SRL varies significantly. She noted that legal representation is most likely to be advantageous in adversarial settings and in procedurally complex areas of law. In contrast, Greiner and Pattanayak found no significant effect on outcomes for SRLs in their randomised trial, nor in the other literature on outcomes for SRLs. However, more SRL felt that the outcome was fair and were satisfied with the process than represented litigants. SRL are more likely to proceed to adjudication than to settle and this may both affect their relative success and their satisfaction with the process. There is a lack of understanding by some SRLs that court is seen as a last resort and that most lawyers will take a conciliatory approach in order to settle before adjudication. Toy-Cronin highlights that it ‘comes as a surprise to many LiPs that much litigation work occurs outside the court and that through the preparatory stage and right up to the door of the courtroom, there is encouragement to settle.; Toy-Cronin argues that many of these reasons represent the tension arising from the projected accessibility of the court and protecting the scarce resource of hearing time in court. In essence, SRLs ‘lack strategic overview [which] means they do not know where a reasonable settlement lies, [they] can be difficult to communicate with, and … expect resolution by way of adjudication.’ That is, a SRL is more likely to want their day in court. Lawyers don't because they know court is an all-or-nothing coin toss on the contentious issues and completely unnecessary on ones where the law and fact are reasonably certain.
Because your legal fees and contract damages are not "in addition to" your risk; they are your risk. If you pay the retainer and lose, you don't lose anything more than the retainer and damages. If you pay the retainer and win, you don't win anything more than the retainer and damages. The only kind of argument I can see here is that you're incurring some kind of psychic cost by enduring the uncertainty surrounding the litigation, but I can't remember ever seeing a case -- in Florida or elsewhere -- in which the court recognized taking on risk as a compensable harm, especially in a contract case, where damages are much more limited than in other kinds of cases. Risk is just a necessary feature of an adversarial legal system.
If you're in the United States, another lawyer in a firm you've hired may or may not be your attorney, but it would not be uncommon for him to have some involvement in the case, and he would be expected to treat you as a client in terms of privilege and conflicts of interest. Just the same, this is something you need to be very direct on. &quot;Are you my attorney?&quot; or &quot;Have we established an attorney-client relationship?&quot; are going to be your best options.
One important formal difference is that self-represented litigants cannot claim the same costs if they prevail in a civil case. Costs are capped at 2/3 of what they would have received, had they been represented. (&quot;Disbursements&quot;, such as court fees, are not subject to the same limit.) Moreover, their deemed hourly rate is £19/hr, unless it's possible to demonstrate that they've incurred greater financial loss as a result of doing the work. This is much less than the billed rate for qualified counsel. A less practical privilege is wearing gowns and wigs. Self-represented litigants are not allowed to pretend that they are barristers by donning their finest horsehair, or going on about &quot;my learned friend&quot;. Solicitor-advocates are &quot;my friend&quot; but laypeople should not use this language at all. Outside of the courtroom, ordinary people can in principle do their own conveyancing (for example), but there are many practical obstacles. One is being fully exposed to the costs of mistakes. Mortgage lenders will often refuse to let random members of the public take care of the legal intricacies, and some solicitors on the other side will advise their clients not to bother. There are also a few technicalities which are easier for practicing solicitors, such as access to DX (a specialist private postal service) for shuttling reams of paper documents across the country. Case law (Domb v Isoz [1980] 1 All ER 942) lets solicitors effect an exchange of contracts by telephone, but this has not been recognised for other people, who continue to have to do it physically.
Your attorney can file a lawsuit against the other driver, and legal liability can be determined in court. Your want to let an attorney do this, because the one thing that keeps you from being (expensively) counter-sued for defamation is that you didn't name the driver and insurance company. It is extremely unlikely that the other driver accused you of liability ("liable" is a legal conclusion, not a fact). Instead, there is a dispute over the facts. During the trial, both sides get to present their evidence and the judge will determine who is actually liable. If you are found liable, your insurance company may have to pay up. If the other guy is found liable, his company will have to pay up. Or, fault can be split 50-50 (in which case you will be out of luck because you don't have collision insurance to cover your losses). If the insurance company believes that the facts support their client and that you will lose in court, they are not going to volunteer to pay your losses. If they believe that the facts support you, or are closer to 50-50 w.r.t. fault, they are unlikely to volunteer to give you money. If the driver makes a material plainly false statement to his insurance company, they might have recourse against him. Lying under oath is perjury which is a criminal offense. But mis-remembering facts or having incorrect beliefs is not a crime and won't lead to any legal problems for the driver. The belief that you are not at fault is not a lie. If the facts are as cut and dried as you make them out to be, the matter will be easily sorted out in court.
Law is more like sport than mathematics You don’t know how it will turn out until you play the game. If a case goes to trial it’s because at both sides believe they can win. Both sides probably have good reasons for their belief. At least one of them is wrong.
The only way in which you could be &quot;incorrectly listed as a defendant&quot; is if somehow your name was typed in as a party (there would be a glaring gap, that no paragraph of the complaint says anything about you as a defendant). Assuming the situation is nothing so bizarre as a typo, you are a defendant. Whether or not you are liable in this case is a matter of fact and law, and the plaintiff's attorney has probably done due diligence in suing everybody imaginable. Perhaps the plaintiff lied to his attorney about material facts (read the complaint); or perhaps there is a credible legal theory under which you would be liable (read the complaint). Your attorney will take care of your problems, to the best of his ability. He may be able to persuade the plaintiff's attorney that they stand no realistic hope of winning and some chance of getting smacked for pointlessly involving you. If the plaintiff's attorney isn't persuaded by the argument, your attorney could submit the legal arguments as a motion to dismiss. If the judge is not persuaded (at this stage), you (your attorney) will have to counter the arguments presented at trial.
You want a lawyer who accepts tenant-side landlord tenant cases, usually a solo practitioner or small law firm or legal clinic. Medium to large sized law firms usually don't practice that kind of law at all, or only represent landlords, as a matter of policy. The usual problem, however, is that lawyers are often too expensive relative to the amount in controversy to make sense to hire to fully represent you in a matter like this one. You might want to have a "limited engagement" such as a one time consult with a lawyer, rather than a full retention of a lawyer, over an issue like this one.