The collaboration will examine why more people are representing themselves in court and the impact their cases have on the judicial system.
People can appear in court without legal representation in Australia, and the number of people representing themselves has risen sharply . But there is little understanding of what drives these individuals and what administrative burden their cases place on courts.
Now, a new research partnership between UNSW and the Federal Court of Australia aims to find out why.
UNSW and the Federal Court of Australia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that paves the way for researchers to access a decade of de-identified court data. A pilot study will use the data to examine self-represented litigants in the federal jurisdiction.
The investigation builds on similar analysis previously conducted in South Australia, which investigated the administrative burden self-represented litigants placed on the state’s courts.
UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice Associate Professor Dr Harry Hobbs and Professor Kristy Martire from the UNSW School of Psychology are jointly leading the research.
“The data will allow us to understand more seriously what’s driving the increase of self-represented litigants, where it’s coming from, and then allow us to develop more enduring responses,” Dr Hobbs says.
The Federal Court of Australia is providing in-kind support for the pilot, while UNSW Science Translational Impact Seed Funding and the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration (AIJA) are providing financial support.
Understanding the wider impact
The pilot will lay the groundwork for a larger, co-designed research project examining how self-represented matters differ from cases involving legal representation. The research will also explore who self-represented litigants are, where they come from and how their cases progress through the court.
For Prof. Martire, the project offers an opportunity to examine the issue at scale from a psychological perspective and to “have a look at many cases rather than digging very deeply into fewer cases”.
“The data I have doesn’t really allow me to look at psychological phenomena yet, but the hope is that the bigger project will allow us to be able to speak to people who are self-represented and to learn more about who they are and what their experiences are from a psychological perspective,” Prof. Martire says.
The wider research will also study the impact self-represented cases have on court administration. Dr Hobbs says the research could help courts develop better ways to support self-represented litigants.
“Often the litigant might not want that help, so it’s also a matter of how you help someone present their best argument if they don’t accept your help because it means they end up perhaps having worse outcomes than they might have,” he explains.
“It’s always a risk that a potentially relevant claim is not ventilated properly, particularly when it involves the sovereign citizen cohort where there’s voluminous paperwork that you need to read very closely to work out if there is an underlying legal issue. That takes an inordinate amount of time and resources. When that happens, it means other people’s claims take longer to be resolved, so there’s stress more broadly across the system.”
By examining court files, judgments and the experiences of judicial officers, the project seeks to build a clearer picture of the challenges self-represented litigants can pose for courts and tribunals. The findings will help identify practical strategies that support both procedural fairness and the efficient administration of justice.
“The ultimate aim is to help develop better guidance for judges about how to manage self-represented litigants. If we can understand what’s going on and why they’re doing appearing without representation, we can suggest why current approaches might not be working or effective, and why X, Y, and Z instead might be more effective.”
By examining court files, judgments and the experiences of judicial officers, the project seeks to build a clearer picture of the challenges self-represented litigants can pose for courts and tribunals.
The findings will help identify practical strategies that support both procedural fairness and the efficient administration of justice.
