5 Legal Matters that Don’t Require Lawyers
Lawyers might be in every town and city in the country, but that doesn’t mean they are a necessity. It can cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer for just a few appearances and meetings. For most people, a lawyer isn’t an affordable option. Fortunately, they aren’t always needed to handle a legal matter. Here are some legal issues and cases that don’t require an attorney.
Small Claims Cases
Virtually all small claims cases are done without lawyers. In fact, they are typically barred from representing someone in a small claims court because parties are supposed to represent themselves. Lawyers shouldn’t even be considered in the first place because small claims cases usually have limits of only a few thousand dollars per case. Hiring a lawyer for such a case would be completely pointless. Therefore, you can’t use an attorney for a small claims case and you wouldn’t want to either.
Traffic Violations
For most traffic violations, there is no reason to get a lawyer involved if you committed the violation or don’t want to fight it. We’re talking about smaller violations, such as speeding or parking illegally though. Using a lawyer for DUI or DWI cases is always a good idea. Otherwise, you don’t really need a lawyer to walk into court and face the fine for a speeding ticket. The same applies for parking violations, texting while driving, and all the other things that are illegal. There’s really no point in spending thousands of dollars to fight a ticket that may be anywhere from $100 to $600.
Changes of Name
To change your own name, you will have to go through a somewhat lengthy but simple process that doesn’t require a lawyer. You can do the entire process by yourself from start to finish. The only tricky part about the whole situation is updating all of your accounts and whatnot with your new name. Still, lawyers aren’t necessary. You just have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, advertise your name change, and then wait a few months for the change to become official. People change their name all the time for whatever reason, so the process is fairly simple but can take a long time to process.
Copyrighting
You don’t need a lawyer to copyright something either. In fact, you automatically own the copyright to anything that you write or draw. Otherwise, you will need to apply for a copyright for other items. The entire process involves some forms, some fees, and then the issuing of a copyright certificate. You can but do not need to hire a lawyer during any part of the process. For the most part, people shouldn’t have a problem copyrighting something that they created or they own the rights to.
Removing Your Own Works from Another Unauthorized Website
For writers or poets, it is fairly simple to police where your work gets published and where it doesn’t. You hold the license to your works in most cases unless you have given partial or full rights to someone else. Therefore, you can get an unauthorized publication of your work off the Internet through various steps. You can start out by e-mailing the webmaster with a demand to remove the content. After that, you can appeal to the host of the website, which is normally obligated by law and terms of service to shut the site down if the content isn’t removed. None of this needs to involve a lawyer.
No Lawyer Necessary!
Lawyers do serve a necessary and good purpose, but they are just so darn expensive for the average person. On top of that, not all legal matters require the representation of an attorney. A regular person still has plenty of ways to deal with their own legal matters. Of course, a lawyer is suggested for more serious matters, especially when a person doesn’t have any legal experience.
