Heather Hui-Litwin volunteers as a duty counsel with Law Help Ontario, offering assistance to civil litigants in the Toronto courts. Heather’s personal experience as a self-represented litigant in a civil lawsuit means that she has a unique understanding of and empathy for the needs of SRLs. Read More

As a finale to our month of focus on “Listening to SRLs and including them as stakeholders”, I want to explore a legal culture that enables and tolerates judges treating SRLs rudely and discourteously.

I do not mean to suggest that all judges behave this way. There are honorable exceptions and I hope they will take some support from this blog post.

For example, I did not notice any Supreme Court justices sniggering behind their hands at…