What actually happens when someone shows up to court without a lawyer? Do they get help or are they just on their own?

Mostly on their own. And that's the honest answer I wish we saw less of at the courthouse. But we are all feeling the pressure of rising costs of living and a good legal defense is costly.

While I never know exactly what court calendar I will manage until the day before, I often work the pro se dissolution calendar on Wednesday afternoons. That's the court session where people going through divorce -- or trying to finalize one -- appear without attorneys. Some of them have done their research. Most haven't, and it's not because they didn't try. It's because the information they needed wasn't where they were looking.

What I've watched happen, repeatedly: someone shows up. They've filled out what they could find. The judge reviews the case and identifies something missing -- a settlement conference that hasn't happened, a parenting plan that isn't complete, a document that wasn't filed correctly. The hearing can't move forward. The next available date is months out. And that person has to go home and start the clock over.

For someone without a lawyer, every one of those delays has a cost. Sometimes it's financial. Sometimes it's a custody arrangement that's been in limbo for months. Sometimes it's a summer that gets swallowed by a process that could have moved faster if the right information had been easier to find.

Here's what I know from working inside this office: there are resources that exist specifically to help self-represented litigants. Forms, guides, options most people never find because they're buried or not communicated clearly. One of my day-one commitments is to change that -- plain-language guides, better organization, information that actually reaches people before they walk through the door. Not after.

The Clerk's office doesn't decide outcomes. We don't make rulings. But we control the information environment that residents walk into -- and right now that environment isn't serving the people who need it most. That's fixable. I know exactly how to fix it. It's one of the reasons I'm running.