Juan Rodriguez said he never imagined when he and his ex-girlfriend split up that eight years later he would still be in the throes of litigation over custody of their children. He wasn’t sure where to turn for help when he decided to appeal fees paid to a therapist who was not court-appointed.
He was about to give up, he said, when he discovered the Civil Appellate Self-Help Clinic. The California Court of Appeal, the appellate section of the Orange County Bar Association, and the Public Law Center created the clinic to help litigants representing themselves manage the complexities of appellate law.
“It’s more helpful than I thought it would be,” Rodriguez said recently after visiting the clinic for the first time.
The service is going full bore after a soft launch last year and is now seeking to increase the number of volunteer attorneys on its roster, Managing Attorney Betsy Forbath said.
The need for the clinic arose from the increasing number of people representing themselves in civil cases, who Forbath said comprise more than 17% of civil appeals on Orange County dockets. That’s primarily because those litigants can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and she said not having one can thwart their access to justice.
Many self-represented cases are dismissed over procedural defects, “preventing them from being heard on the merits and limiting (the litigants’) access to justice,” she said.
Unfamiliarity with the appellate process also results in a significantly increased court workload and delays in resolving appeals, Forbath added.
Trial courts were the first to set up self-help centers across the state, and appellate courts eventually followed suit. The appellate court in Los Angeles was the first to open a clinic in 2007, and San Diego opened its clinic in 2014.
Orange County’s appellate court chose to borrow elements of both neighboring counties’ approaches, combining a short seminar with 20 to 30 minutes of individual assistance, said clinic volunteer M.C. Sungaila, an appellate attorney with Costa Mesa-based Haynes & Boone. She was instrumental in getting the Orange County clinic started after gaining experience working at the appellate court in Los Angeles.
The OC clinic started with a core group of eight experienced appellate attorneys, all volunteers. That enabled the clinic staff to work out the kinks, gauge demand, and figure out how to best publicize the service, Sungaila said.
Forbath said she would like to expand the volunteer attorney roster to 15. She’s seeking attorneys skilled in appellate law, though not necessarily those who practice appellate law exclusively.
Sungaila said that giving her time to the clinic has opened her eyes to the range of people who represent themselves, including small-business owners.
“To me, it highlighted that gap” in access to justice, which “is much broader than you might actually think.”
Appellate attorney Dale Quinlan, a solo practitioner in Newport Beach, also volunteers to help litigants navigate the nuances of appellate law.
“I have over time recognized that (in representing themselves), people have trouble working with the court system,” he said. “More and more people are not able to afford lawyers, so I thought it would be good to participate in a process to allow them to succeed in that forum rather than to be beat up and lose.”
Rodriguez met with Quinlan when he came to the clinic, and while he’d originally felt defeated in trying to file his appellate brief, he said he felt more optimistic after talking with the lawyer.
“He told me not to give up,” Rodriguez said. “He gave me the pros and cons and said I need to decide. The way he put it together aligned me to keep going. I have someone to help me, which makes it a lot easier.”
Jim Mahacek, a semiretired appellate attorney, said he volunteers his time to help facilitate more self-represented cases being decided on their merits rather than being dismissed over technicalities.
“For litigants, (the clinic) increases their chances that the court will decide their case on its merits, not blow them out because of some indecipherable rule they didn’t find during their lay research,” he said. “They also have a better feeling about the ‘system,’ because at least those wearing the black robes listened to them.”
The clinic takes place from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month.
