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This article may be framed as light-hearted satire, but it reflects something far more serious: the persistent cultural contempt within the legal profession for litigants in person. These aren’t just colourful oddities disrupting courtrooms, many are ordinary people forced to represent themselves due to circumstances beyond their control.

Some of us are LiPs because we were discriminated against at work due to disability, then left with no access to legal aid for employment or defamation claims. Others are navigating trauma, poverty, or institutional failures that legal professionals are insulated from. We don’t turn up unrepresented for fun. We do it because the system gives us no choice.

To ridicule people who are shut out of justice, especially in a profession meant to uphold it, is not just bad taste; it deepens inequality. The legal aid cuts and lack of public funding have created a two-tier system where procedural fairness depends on wealth or status. In this environment, dismissing LiPs as cranks or burdens is a way to excuse institutional indifference.

This article says more about the culture of exclusion in law than it does about those Morton mocks. We are all potential LiPs. The real test is whether the legal system can uphold fairness for everyone, not just those who can afford it. And I can tell you it doesn’t.