Opening of the Pro Se Legal Assistance Clinic of The Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University at the Eastern District of New York’s Central Islip courthouse in February. From left, Hofstra Law School staff attorney Ka Fei Wong, Eastern District Judge Joanna Seybert, Chief Judge Dora L. Irizarry of the Eastern District of New York, Judge Gail Prudenti, dean of Hofstra Law and Hofstra Law School professor Jennifer Gundlach. Photo: Hofstra Law/Facebook
This summer, a program founded in 2018 by renowned former Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner to help unrepresented parties in federal court closed its doors. Notably, it wasn’t for lack of clients; rather, the Posner Center’s Board of Directors announced that it was because the center was receiving many more requests for assistance from pro se litigants than it could handle.
The high demand for such services comes as no surprise to those few attorneys who run programs to assist unrepresented litigants in New York’s federal courts. In 2018 alone, there were 4,844 new civil cases filed in the federal courts in New York by plaintiffs who did not have lawyers, and many defendants lack legal counsel as well.
