How are you able to represent yourself in a court of law without passing the bar or being able to practice law?

Question

Bonus Question- if you won the case, why couldn’t you then represent others?

In: Other

Answer 1

It’s a backwards way to look at the problem.

We started from the idea that a person should be responsible for defending themselves. It quickly became apparent that a person who did so – usually with no training or knowledge – was at a severe disadvantage. So the courts ruled that everyone should be given a lawyer in an attempt to make things fair.

So representing yourself came first, and only later did the idea of lawyering come about. Another way of looking at it might be to assume that representing oneself is the default, and it is only recently that lawyers became de facto mandatory.