Bonus Question- if you won the case, why couldn’t you then represent others?
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If you are injured, then you have every right to patch yourself up as best you can. But if someone wants to heal injuries professionally, then we insist that they go to medical school and get a professional license.
Similarly, every competent adult has the right to represent themselves in court. In fact, the word “represent” here is almost meaningless — you *are* yourself, and you are definitionally capable of speaking for yourself. But we have strict standards for speaking for *other people*, just like we have strict standards for performing surgery on other people, and for the same reason: the consequences of doing it badly are potentially life-altering, and so we demand a high baseline degree of competence.
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