Talking with the Judge and other lawyer

I’ve discussed some of the background realities of talking with the judge and the attorney for the other side when you’re representing yourself as a defendant in a suit for debt in “Real Words about Talking to Judges and Lawyers.”  I mentioned that  neither judges nor the lawyers will start off respecting you if you’re pro se. That means you’re going to need to do certain things.

When speaking as a pro se defendant in a debt case, your first rule, always, is to speak normally. That means, use plain English – don’t try to impress anybody with you or what you know. Impress them with the facts. Speak in a normal tone of voice and with respect but not fear. Don’t kiss up to them, but treat them the way you’d treat somebody you like or can work with. Keep your cool. You’re in a situation where disagreements always come up – they’re not personal, or at least you should never make your words personal.

With those things in mind, there are some specifics to remember with judges and the lawyer for the other side.

Talking with the Judge

You’re going to have to be better than the lawyer for the other side. There are reasons this is possible, but it’s primarily because of the business model of the debt collectors. They take a factory approach, and their lawyer won’t work on your case much at all. It just isn’t profitable for them to do that. Nor is it profitable for them to hire the smartest lawyers in the business. Their whole approach is to bug you into paying without suing you and then to file huge numbers of suits knowing most people won’t defend themselves at all and will allow a default judgment. This isn’t to say their lawyers aren’t any good and can’t win, but it gives you a good chance if you’re willing to work.

Defending yourself takes you way out of the “ordinary” kinds of cases the deal with, and it’s a start, but you also still have to put in enough work to be better than the other side, and that’s what we discuss here.

Because of the general lack of respect for pro se defendants, when you say something, you will be more likely to need to cite controlling authority than a lawyer would. They can make references to “black letter law” (which is just legalese for “generally obvious”), but you will do better, if the issue is important at all, by citing a case that supports it. That means research is going to be important to you. (We have a product that can help with this.)

One thing non-lawyers seem to have trouble with is keeping things “relevant.” If you’re arguing about whether the debt collector has proof they own the debt, some things will shine a light on the issue, but the fact that the company has been sued by the federal government for collection abuses will not be, for example. Because of the way the court sees you, it will have very little tolerance for any straying off topic – the judge will think you’re wasting time and often tune out. Therefore, make sure everything you say relates to exactly the issue you’re discussing.

A related issue is keeping things brief. Again, the court will quickly sense that you’re wasting time if you veer away from the most important things at all. The judge doesn’t need to know why you thought something or planned something, it needs to know what the law requires. Pro se defendants seem to have a tremendous difficulty with this – you want to tell your story, but let me tell you that the court could not give one damn about your story. Legal talk is very different in this respect than regular human talk. Do NOT waste the court’s time.

Don’t whine. This is probably self-explanatory, but it’s part of the other things I’ve mentioned. Because the court does not care about your feelings, it will regard anything you say or insinuate about your feelings as a waste of time.

Know when to hold and when to fold. This is part of maintaining self-discipline and paying attention to the judge. When the judge says they’ve ruled, you are on extremely borrowed time. Ordinarily you should shut up and sit down. As I point out in “Real Talk,” you do that by saying, “Thank you, your honor.” But sometimes you don’t think you’ve had a chance to raise a crucial point. In that situation, you say something like, “I hear that, your honor, but I wanted to make sure you knew that they caught the defendant red-handed holding the knife with blood all over him…”

What I’m saying here is that if you want to say something after the judge has already ruled, it had better be damn good, and even then you’re on thin ice, but sometimes you have to say something to preserve the record. Judges can be hasty, and specially so with pro se debt defendants, so sometimes you may feel you have to point something out, but make sure it’s good – otherwise you’re just going to make the judge mad.

And speaking of anger, you must ALWAYS keep your feelings in check when you’re talking to the judge. If you raise your voice you could get thrown in jail for contempt of court, but of course it’s much more likely that the judge will just stop listening to you for the rest of the case. Baseball coaches seem to think it helps sometimes to get kicked out of a game, but this is never going to be a good strategy for you. Shut up, collect your thoughts, and be ready for the next thing.

Talking with the Lawyer

And now just a few words about the lawyers. First, keeping your cool is just as important with them as it is with judges. They can’t throw you in jail, but they can certainly tune you out in lots of ways. It won’t be good for you if they do.

Because you’ll be negotiating in various ways with the other lawyer, you need to remember one thing: threats are cheap. Because they don’t have a lot of respect for you, if you tell them “we should settle this thing now, or I’m going to file a motion for summary judgment next week…” they’re just going to ignore that. They don’t think you’ll do it. Any similar threats are pointless and more harmful than good. Instead, do the work first and let your actions speak for you.

In other words, don’t tell them you’re going to file a motion – file it and then talk. That would be more work, no doubt, if they ever would listen to threats and save you the trouble, but they never do. Threatening will lose ground for you. Doing without threatening (or warning, or negotiating to try not to have to file something) will gain ground for you.

Incidentally, a lot of lawyers try the same trick with the same results (nothing), but whereas I could probably draft a motion for summary judgment and send it to the other side saying that if they don’t settle I’m going to file the motion, you probably couldn’t even do that. There’s a chance they’d read it if a lawyer wrote it, but they probably won’t read anything you send until you file it. So go ahead and file what you’re going to file. Let your actions do your talking.

Don’t be afraid of the work. As long as the case continues, nothing you do will be wasted – everything you do will teach things you’re going to need to know.

On Being Nasty or Difficult

I hesitate to address this topic, but think I must. The lawyer for the other side does not take you seriously most of the time, and getting personal will normally not do any good. However, he or she is a person, and in a rare case, especially where there are complicated legal issues or where you’ve already done some winning, being personally difficult or unpleasant can work to your advantage. They already don’t want to work on your case, and if you can make them feel worse about that you might hasten their willingness to settle. This is rarely a good strategy, however. If you’re good at it (and you will know if you are), and the situation develops correctly, you might consider it. This is obviously only relating to the other side’s lawyer, never the judge.

[This article updated 3/26/25]