Self-Represented Litigants Editing and Proofreading Services

Someone representing themselves files a thirty-page statement setting out everything that happened, in the order it occurred to them, with the strongest point on page nineteen. The judge has read it the night before alongside eleven other files. In court they ask what the applicant is actually asking the court to do and on what basis, and the applicant begins again at the beginning. The material was there. It was arranged for someone who already cared, not for someone deciding how to spend forty minutes.

We edit what people write when representing themselves in court — statements of claim and defence, affidavits and witness statements, written submissions and skeleton arguments, chronologies and lists of issues, applications and supporting notices, responses to the other side's material, bundles and document indexes, and correspondence with the court registry and the opposing party. Our editors work on the document a judge reads at eleven at night before your hearing.

Written submissions are read by someone with limited time who is looking for the issue and the remedy, and their failure is a complete account arranged in the order the events happened rather than the order the decision has to be made in. We work through these so the document opens with what you are asking the court to do and the basis for it, since a judge who reaches page nineteen before finding your best point has spent eighteen pages not knowing what to look for; so the issues in dispute are separated from the background that is not disputed, given that a judge only has to decide the contested points and reading the agreed history at the same weight wastes the attention you need; so each assertion of fact points to the specific paragraph and page of the evidence that supports it, because an assertion the judge cannot verify quickly is one they may set aside regardless of its truth; so the other side's strongest point is stated fairly and answered, since a submission that ignores it reads as though you have no answer, and the judge will have read their material too; and so length is cut to what the decision actually requires, given that a shorter document that answers the question outperforms a longer one that contains the answer somewhere. Submissions written this way are read the whole way through.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including case materials, evidence and personal circumstances. We are editors rather than lawyers, paralegals or advisers, and we offer no view on your case, the law, your prospects or what you should argue. What we can do is make sure your document can be followed by someone reading it once.