With no access to affordable legal representation, increasing numbers of people must represent themselves in legal proceedings. The justice community in the United States has responded by expanding resources to help self-represented parties navigate the system and get their day in court. However, with no experience addressing a judge, questioning a witness, or offering documents into evidence, self-represented parties find themselves facing these tasks for the very first time in a real-life hearing environment, with a lot at stake. Across the U.S. the problem is acute. Nationally, more than 80% of litigants appear without lawyers in matters as important as evictions, mortgage foreclosures, child custody and child support proceedings, and debt collection cases. In New York State Courts alone, 1.8 million litigants appear without an attorney annually, accounting for nearly 10% of the state’s population. Last year, there were 28,469 cases in Connecticut’s family courts with at least one self-represented party, and nearly half of those cases had two or more self-represented parties. An additional 20,000 civil cases in Connecticut courts had at least one self-represented party. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index confirms what we all know: lack of affordable legal counsel is a global problem.