{"id":4303,"date":"2025-02-21T12:41:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T12:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mass-justices-issue-new-guidelines-for-courts-handling-self-represented-litigants-in-civil-cases\/"},"modified":"2025-02-21T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T12:41:35","slug":"mass-justices-issue-new-guidelines-for-courts-handling-self-represented-litigants-in-civil-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mass-justices-issue-new-guidelines-for-courts-handling-self-represented-litigants-in-civil-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass. Justices Issue New Guidelines for Courts Handling Self-Represented Litigants in Civil Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">  <!----> <!----> <!----><\/p>\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">\n<p>\u201cThese new guidelines provide important guidance to judges concerning the kinds of steps that they can and should take, without violating their obligation of impartiality, to ensure that cases involving self-represented litigants are fairly heard,\u201d said Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mass.gov\/news\/supreme-judicial-court-issues-new-judicial-guidelines-for-civil-cases-with-self-represented-litigants\" target=\"_blank\" link-data=\"{\" cms.site.owner=\"\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">statement<\/a> to the Massachusetts Court System. \u201cI would like to thank the members of the committee that drafted the guidelines for their dedication to this project.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <!----> <!----> <!----> <!----><\/p>\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">\n<p>In contrast to criminal cases, civil cases litigants who cannot afford an attorney do not have a right to appointed counsel. While some of these litigants may be able to obtain representation from legal aid attorneys or pro bono counsel, many must represent themselves. In certain civil case types, 80% or more of the cases involve at least one self-represented litigant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <!----> <!----> <!----> <!----><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThese new guidelines provide important guidance to judges concerning the kinds of steps that they can and should take, without violating their obligation of impartiality, to ensure that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1080,2137,555,4747,4748,3347,595,4750,801,4749],"class_list":["post-4303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-cases","tag-civil","tag-courts","tag-guidelines","tag-handling","tag-issue","tag-justices","tag-litigants","tag-mass","tag-selfrepresented"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}