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Sooner or later, every litigator ends up across the table from a person with no lawyer. It happens more in family and small civil files than anywhere else, and it changes how you have to work. We sat down with a litigator who has spent two decades in provincial and superior courts to talk about doing it right.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The First Thing to Establish With an SRL
Q: When you learn the other side is self-represented, what is your very first move?
Before anything substantive, I make sure they understand who I am and who I am not. I represent one person, and it is not them. I say that out loud and I put it in writing. It sounds obvious, but a lot of self-represented litigants genuinely believe the lawyer on the file is a neutral court official who will help them. They are not being naive. Nobody ever told them otherwise.
Q: How do you phrase that without sounding cold?
Warmth and clarity are not opposites. I will say: I act for the respondent, I cannot give you legal advice, and I encourage you to get your own. Then I point them somewhere real. Duty counsel, the court's self-help centre, the law society referral line. Being decent costs me nothing and it protects the file.
Tip. Send a short letter early confirming that you act only for your client, that you cannot advise the other party, and listing two or three places they can get help. It sets the tone and it is a useful document to have later.
Where Lawyers Get the Duty of Fairness Wrong
Q: There is a professional duty to be fair to an unrepresented party. Where do lawyers misread it?
Two errors, opposite directions. The first is the lawyer who thinks fairness means going soft. It does not. You still advance your client's case with everything you have. The duty is about not taking unfair advantage of the fact that they do not know the rules, not about pulling your punches on the merits.
Q: And the second error?
The lawyer who overcorrects and starts acting like the other side's counsel. You cannot draft their materials, tell them how to plead, or coach them on strategy. The moment you do, you have a conflict and you have muddied whose interests you serve. The line between exploiting someone's ignorance and representing them is real and narrow, and you stay on the right side of it.
Fairness to the other side is not softness toward your own client. Those are two different obligations, and good lawyers hold both at once. Devon Reyes
A concrete example of taking unfair advantage: burying a critical term in a long consent and hoping they sign without reading it, or relying on a deemed admission when they miss a deadline they never understood. All technically within the rules. All the kind of thing a court remembers about you.
Keeping Communications Clean and On the Record
Q: Communication seems to be where files go sideways. How do you protect yourself?
Everything in writing, or confirmed in writing right after. With a self-represented party I assume every conversation will be recounted differently later, so I email a summary: here is what we discussed, what you agreed to, what happens next. If they disagree, I want that on the record too.
On tone: plain language, no jargon, no sarcasm. Never anything you would be embarrassed to have read aloud to a judge, because it might be. Assume the whole chain becomes an exhibit. That single assumption fixes most bad email habits on its own.
Watch out. Do not use legal terms of art as a weapon. Telling an unrepresented person to perfect their appeal or respond to a request to admit without plain explanation can look like sharp practice if they miss the step because they did not understand the words.
For related ground, see our note on staying calm on high-conflict files, which tends to overlap.
Managing a Judge Who Bends Toward the SRL
Q: Judges are told to assist self-represented litigants. Sometimes it feels like the bench is on their side. How do you handle it?
You accept it as normal and stop taking it personally. The court has an obligation to make sure an unrepresented party gets a fair hearing, which can mean explaining procedure or softening a deadline. That is not bias. That is the system working the way it is supposed to.
Q: But what if it crosses into helping their case on the substance?
Then you note it, politely and on the record. You can say, respectfully, that you understand the court is assisting with process, and you want to make sure your client's position on the merits is preserved. Never a fight, just a marker. If your materials are clean and your timelines are airtight, a sympathetic bench has less room to drift.
| The court is doing this | Your response |
|---|---|
| Explaining procedure to the SRL | Let it happen, stay quiet |
| Relaxing a filing deadline | Object only if real prejudice, then propose a fix |
| Making the SRL's substantive argument for them | Note it respectfully for the record |
| Cutting off your submissions | Ask for a moment to complete the point |
Advice for a Lawyer Facing Their First One
Q: A junior lawyer is about to run their first file against a self-represented party. One piece of advice?
Slow down. New lawyers want to look sharp, so they move fast and technical. Against a self-represented party that reads as bullying, to the judge and to the client on the other side. Take the time to be clear. Confirm things twice. You will lose nothing on the merits and you will build the kind of reputation that pays off for thirty years.
Q: Anything on the administrative side?
Keep immaculate records. Dates, what was sent, what was received, what was said. These files generate more he-said-she-said than any other kind, and the lawyer with the tidy file wins those exchanges every time. Whether you track it in a notebook or in something like A1 CMS, write it down when it happens, not from memory three months later.
The through-line here is that fairness and advocacy are not in tension. You can be scrupulously decent to a person who has no lawyer and still fight hard for your client, because the two duties live in different places. Confirm early who you are, keep every communication clean enough to read aloud, treat the court's assistance to the other side as the system working, and keep records so good that no dispute about what happened can touch you. Do that, and a self-represented opponent becomes just another file you handle well.
