Pro Bono Jury Trials for Self-Represented Litigants

Most lawyers will not touch a case a week before trial. That is exactly — and only — when this program operates.

If your California civil case is set for a jury trial, you have been prosecuting it yourself in propria persona (“pro se” — without an attorney), and the court’s mandatory settlement conference has come and gone without a settlement, we will consider substituting in as your attorney of record for one limited purpose: to prepare over the final weekend and try your case to the jury, through verdict. No attorney’s fee is charged for that work.

This is a public-service program of a Board-Certified civil trial practice. It exists because jury trials are the craft of this office, and because people who have carried a case to trial alone deserve one fair shot at having it tried well. It is not a volume service. We are very selective and most inquiries will be declined; acceptance is subject to the criteria below, conflict checks, the firm’s capacity and professional judgment — and is ultimately the firm’s decision.

1. A California civil case, set for a jury trial. A jury trial — not a court (bench) trial, and not an arbitration. You must have already demanded the jury and already paid the advance jury fees (Code of Civil Procedure § 631) — the right can be lost in several ways, and we verify the jury posture from the court’s docket. If the jury has been waived, there is nothing for us to try to a jury, and the program does not apply.
2. You are the plaintiff, representing yourself. The program is for people currently prosecuting their own case in propria persona.
3. The mandatory settlement conference has already failed. We will only consider the case after the parties have been to the MSC — usually held in the weeks before the trial date — and did not settle.
4. Your court’s pre-trial document deadline has not passed — and is at least five days away. Every court’s trial order and local rules set a deadline to file and serve pre-trial documents: the trial brief, motions in limine, jury instructions, verdict forms, and witness and exhibit lists. That deadline usually falls during the week or two before trial. We must be retained at least five days before it, so there is time to prepare, file, and serve those documents. If that deadline has already passed when you contact us, we will almost certainly be unable to take the case — a last-minute substitution cannot cure missed pre-trial deadlines. We take the case on, if at all, in this final stretch before trial — not months out. We are not offering to litigate your case; we are offering to try it.
5. The case is small. Small means the whole of it can genuinely be prepared in a matter of days — the court-required pre-trial documents within the five days after we step in, and the rest of the trial preparation, exhibits, and witness examinations over the single weekend before trial begins (typically a Monday start). As a rule of thumb: a trial expected to run about one to three days, a short witness list, and a manageable set of exhibits. If your case needs more preparation than that, it is not a fit for this program.
6. Your trial subpoenas are already served. You must have already served every trial subpoena your case needs — for each witness you want on the stand, for any records or materials you are requesting for trial (subpoenas duces tecum), and for any foundational witnesses, such as custodians of records needed to authenticate your documents. Serving trial subpoenas is — and remains — entirely your responsibility; this office does not serve subpoenas, and in the final days before trial it is generally too late to compel a missing witness. A witness who is not under subpoena may simply never appear — and the jury will not hear them.

If we accept your case, the representation is a limited-scope engagement, set out in a written agreement you sign before we appear. Here is exactly how it works:

• We substitute in for trial. You and Attorney Milligan sign a substitution of attorney making him your attorney of record, filed with the court, solely so the jury trial can be conducted by counsel.
• At the same time, you sign a second substitution of attorney. That second substitution puts you back in your case, representing yourself in propria persona. We file it promptly once the jury’s verdict is received — or once the trial otherwise ends or is continued — and when it is filed, the case is yours again, in its entirety. Until a substitution is filed with the court, the attorney of record remains counsel.
• What we do: once retained, we promptly prepare, file, and serve the pre-trial documents your court requires — the trial brief, motions in limine, jury instructions and verdict forms, and witness and exhibit lists — by the deadline in your court’s trial order and local rules. (This is why we must be retained at least five days before that deadline.) Over the weekend before trial we complete the trial preparation from the file you provide — exhibits and witness examinations — and then we conduct the jury trial itself: jury selection, opening statement, the examination of witnesses, closing argument, through jury verdict. Pre-trial documents prepared after we substitute in, and motions made during trial itself, are included.
• What we do not do: discovery or discovery motions; serving trial subpoenas (your witnesses, records, and foundational witnesses must already be under subpoena); dispositive motions and any other law-and-motion practice belonging to the period before that final weekend; continuances; settlement negotiation (if an offer arrives, we relay it promptly and the decision is yours alone); post-trial motions (including any motion for new trial or for judgment notwithstanding the verdict); cost memoranda; enforcement of the judgment; or any appeal. We will identify matters that are outside this scope when we see them, but we will not handle them or advise on them — they, and their deadlines, remain yours. After the trial ends, everything that follows is yours, as a self-represented litigant. Post-trial and appellate deadlines are short and strictly enforced — they will be your responsibility, not ours.
• Nothing happens until every condition is met. We file the substitution of attorney — and only then appear — after everything is in place: the signed limited-scope engagement and written acknowledgment, both signed substitutions, jury fees posted, the court reporter arranged and paid, and proof that your trial subpoenas were served. Until that substitution is filed, we may decline the matter at any time, for any reason, and you remain fully responsible for your case. Once we appear, we handle the court appearances required of trial counsel in that final window (such as a trial-readiness conference) and the trial itself.
• The engagement ends when the trial ends — however it ends — or if it is continued. Jury verdict, mistrial, nonsuit, dismissal, or any other conclusion of the trial: whichever comes first ends our role. And if the trial is continued for any reason — the court’s calendar, the other side’s motion, anything — the engagement ends the same way. In every case, the second substitution of attorney is then filed promptly, and you are back in charge of the entire case, representing yourself in propria persona. A retrial after a mistrial, and a continued trial date, are not included.

Understand what stepping in at the last minute means. By the time we appear, your case has already been shaped — by how discovery was or was not done, by the motions that were brought, won, and lost, and by the rulings the court has already made. We had no control over any of that, and on the eve of trial, most of it cannot be changed. Some of it may seriously limit what can be presented or recovered at trial.

Concretely, and among other things: if you never properly designated expert witnesses, no expert will testify for you (Code of Civil Procedure § 2034.300) — and we will not try to cure that; documents and witnesses you failed to disclose or produce in discovery may be excluded; admissions deemed against you stand; claims or parties already dismissed stay dismissed; and every ruling the court has made stays made. We do not reopen discovery, seek continuances, or move to undo what came before. The case we try is the case you hand us.

Adverse cost exposure is also yours. A losing party generally owes the winning party’s allowable costs (Code of Civil Procedure § 1032), and if you rejected a statutory settlement offer (Code of Civil Procedure § 998) and do not beat it at trial, you can owe the defendant’s post-offer costs and, in the court’s discretion, their expert-witness fees. Those consequences flow from decisions made before we appeared, and they belong to you. Settlement decisions are yours alone: if any offer is made before or during trial, we will promptly relay it, but whether to accept it is solely your decision.

If we take your case, our commitment is this: we will do the best we can with the case as it exists — prepare it over that weekend, with the evidence that is actually available and admissible, and try it to the jury with the full skill of this office. That is the whole commitment. No outcome is promised, predicted, or implied. Jury trials are inherently uncertain, and a case that arrives with problems keeps its problems.

As part of the written engagement, you will be asked to acknowledge and agree in writing that you understand all of this: that the firm is stepping in at the last minute for trial only; that the firm is not responsible for the condition of the case as it receives it — the discovery, the motions, and the rulings that came before — or for the verdict the jury returns; and that the firm’s responsibility is to conduct the trial itself competently. (California law does not allow a lawyer to prospectively limit liability for the lawyer’s own professional negligence, and nothing in the engagement does so — competent performance of the trial itself always remains our responsibility.)

A lawyer who came into your case earlier, or under a bigger engagement, might do things this program will never do: ask the court to continue the trial so the case could be worked up properly; serve or cure trial subpoenas; seek relief to designate experts; move to reopen discovery or revisit rulings. Some cases would genuinely benefit from those steps. This program categorically does not take them — for anyone.

That is not an oversight; it is the defining condition of this engagement. The only thing on offer is a trial conducted as scheduled, on the record as it exists. As part of the written engagement, you will instruct and direct us, in writing, not to seek a continuance, not to serve or cure trial subpoenas, and not to attempt to repair the case or the record — even where those steps might have helped. If a witness fails to appear at trial or evidence is excluded, we proceed with what remains; we will not ask the court to postpone.

If what your case really needs is fixing rather than trying, this program is not for you. Your alternatives — and we urge you to consider them before contacting us — are to retain full-service counsel (the State Bar of California’s Lawyer Referral Services, (866) 442-2529, can connect you with one), to seek a continuance yourself while you are still your own lawyer, or to continue representing yourself. Choosing this program means choosing, knowingly, to go to trial as scheduled with the case you have.

The point of this program is the jury trial. It is not a device to make the other side offer more money, and we do not lend this firm’s appearance as negotiating leverage. If your real goal is a better settlement, do not apply. Your inquiry must state your settlement history — the last demand, the last offer, and what happened at the mandatory settlement conference — and confirm that your intention is to try the case to a verdict. Inquiries that appear aimed at leverage rather than trial will be declined, and acceptance is conditioned on that stated intention.

Cases that are already close to settlement will be declined. If your last demand and the last offer are within striking distance of each other, or a statutory offer (Code of Civil Procedure § 998) is pending, this program is the wrong vehicle and the answer will be no. And if settlement negotiations begin — or any new offer is made or solicited — after we accept your case but before our substitution of attorney is filed, we may treat that as a withdrawal of your intention to try the case and decline to appear.

To be equally clear about your rights: the decision to settle always belongs to you, the client, at every stage. California law does not permit any agreement that takes that decision away, and we will never ask for one. If an offer arrives after we appear, we will relay it promptly, the choice will be yours alone — and if you accept it, the engagement simply ends and the donated work stays donated. No client can promise not to settle, and we will never ask for that promise — but we are free to spend our donated trial time on people who mean to try their cases, and that is exactly how we choose.

If we accept your case, we charge no attorney’s fee for the trial. Costs are a different thing, and they are all yours: every cost of the case and the trial — jury fees and mileage (including the daily jury fees during trial), court-reporter fees, witness fees, exhibit preparation, and similar charges — is, and remains, your responsibility as the party. This office does not pay or advance any costs. Two deserve special mention: your jury fees must already be paid (part of keeping your jury right intact), and you must arrange and pay in advance for a court reporter to report the trial proceedings. (A court-granted fee waiver, if you have one, is between you and the court.) The written engagement will confirm all of this before we appear.

Inquiries for this program are accepted in writing only. Please do not call about this program — it cannot be evaluated over the phone, and the office cannot take program inquiries or give status updates by phone. Use the confidential contact form, and put “PRO BONO TRIAL” at the start of your message.

Contact us as soon as your mandatory settlement conference has failed — and no later than five days before your court’s deadline to file and serve pre-trial documents. That deadline is in your trial order and your court’s local rules, and in many courts it falls during the week or two before trial — so in practice, write to us promptly after the MSC. Inquiries sent months ahead of trial will not be considered, and inquiries sent after the pre-trial document deadline will almost certainly be too late. Include:

• Your county, court, case number, and trial date;
• Confirmation that the case is set for a jury trial and that your jury fees were posted;
• The date of your mandatory settlement conference and what happened there, plus your settlement history — the last demand, the last offer — and confirmation that your intention is to try the case to a verdict, not to improve an offer;
• Your court’s deadline to file and serve pre-trial documents (from your trial order or local rules), and whether that exchange has already happened;
• Confirmation that your trial subpoenas have been served — witnesses, records and materials (duces tecum), and foundational witnesses — with proofs of service if you have them;
• Whether a court reporter for the trial has been arranged and paid in advance;
• Whether you designated expert witnesses, and any settlement offers (including Code of Civil Procedure § 998 offers) made, rejected, or still pending;
• A short, plain summary of your claims, the defense, and what the case is worth and why;
• How many witnesses and exhibits you expect, and how many days the trial is estimated to take;
• Do not send originals, your entire file, privileged or settlement communications, medical records, or your trial strategy — provide only the items listed above. If we are considering the case, we will tell you exactly what to provide.

We review inquiries as they arrive. If we are considering your case, we will contact you. If you do not hear from us, we are unable to take your case, and you will not receive a reply — please continue preparing to try it yourself, and do not wait on this office for anything.