A Fool For A Client / Live-Action TV

Times where someone takes A Fool for a Client by representing themselves in court in Live-Action TV series.

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• In the All in the Family episode, "Archie's Civil Rights," Archie is charged with possession of a tear gas weapon and tries to defend himself at his arraignment hearing without a lawyer. Of course, not only does this irritate the judge for being out of order, but his typical bigoted and dimwitted blathering leads to him admitting he used it offensively, leading him to be almost charged with an assault felony. Only when the judge learns that the weapon was found by the police officer after an illegal search does the charge get dismissed.
• Michael Bluth represents his family in a mock trial on Arrested Development. His family mocks him, assuming he only thinks he's a lawyer because he portrayed one in a grade-school play, The Trial of Captain Hook, once upon a time.
• Better Call Saul: Jimmy decides to represent himself at his own bar hearing, despite being warned against it and knowing full well about the reputation doing so has. In this case, at least he is a lawyer, and has done criminal cases, but even so. Downplayed as he teams up with Kim. It ends up working in his favor, as only Jimmy would be able to successfully rattle his brother Chuck's cage in the way that he did.
  • He represents himself once more in the finale, after a timeskip of many years and with Bill Oakley as advisory counsel, in order to get himself a cushy plea deal after the authorities finally catch up with him... which he then (willingly) throws away by changing his testimony at the last minute and stating that he was a willing accomplice to Walter White rather than being held against his will. Whilst this is largely to his detriment as he receives a much harsher sentence than what was originally offered before the deal, it allows him to face the consequences of his actions with dignity and to rebuild his relationship with Kim.
• In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon defends himself in traffic court for running a red light. He fails and gets himself thrown in jail for contempt of court, though this is due to him being an insufferable ass and insulting the judge rather than his lack of qualifications.
• Blue Bloods: When Jamie and Edie are accused of misconduct, they decide to fire their lawyers and represent themselves (well, in practice Jamie represents both of them) after each blames the other. This succeeds, and it's partly justified as Jamie is a lawyer himself (he just didn't practice before, having chosen to go into police work instead of that).
• Subverted in the season 5 finale of Bones: The Gravedigger, a former prominent prosecutor, represents herself on multiple murder charges; she consistently out-maneuvered the prosecutor (Caroline) for most of the trial and didn't make any obvious legal mistakes (with the possible exception of acting way too smug for someone who is on trial for kidnapping and first-degree murder—in a jury trial no less) and is convicted.
• CSI:
  • In one episode, a defendant decides to do this to delay his trial, giving him a chance to escape from custody.
  • Another episode has the defendant dismiss his lawyer and represent himself with plenty of pork; he takes particular pleasure in cross-examining a man he stabbed, pressing to know what he was feeling as he lay bleeding out.
• In an episode of Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring represents himself when he's accused of leaving the church light on since his previous lawyer wanted him to plead guilty. It results in a couple of awkward moments where he has to walk back and forth between the dock and the defense chair.
• In a Clip Show episode of Dark Justice, the team is accused of being "The Night Watchmen," the accomplices of the eponymous vigilante. They are tried in front of Judge Marshall (who is secretly Dark Justice himself). They plead not guilty, represent themselves, and ultimately do not even mount a defense, arguing instead that the prosecution didn't make its case that they are the Night Watchmen (which is perfectly acceptable, though inadvisable, in Real Life trials).
• The eponymous character from The Drew Carey Show represents himself in court against a charge of sexual harassment. He sent around a cartoon of a caterpillar having sex with a French fry, and one of the female employees took offense to it. In the end, while the judge admits that the person who did the most damage to Drew's case was Drew himself (to which Drew replies by suggesting one of his friends had an even worse performance), he dismisses the case.
• Equal Justice: Averted in "Sugar Blues" (1x10), where a prisoner defends himself on a murder charge. While he ends up losing, he gives the prosecutor a very hard time. He turned himself into a jailhouse lawyer inside and had apparently won previous cases at trial. An old woman who comes just to watch trials claims he's her favorite since he's that good.
• Eli Stone: One episode featured a lawyer who sued a law firm for not hiring him. The lawyer represented himself during the lawsuit, claiming he didn't need another lawyer. Perhaps no lawyer would support an African-American suing another African-American for racism.
• The Escape Artist: Will defends himself when he's charged with Foyle's murder. Since he's a skilled barrister already, plus has set things up to make it look like self-defense, it works.
• William Garrow in Garrow's Law does this during his potentially ruinous criminal conversation trial at the King's Bench. He manages it successfully to the point where, although the jury find in favor of Sir Arthur Hill, Hill is only awarded damages of one shilling.
• In the Here Come the Brides episode "Loggerheads," Jason temporarily represents himself against Aaron Stempel and uses Unconventional Courtroom Tactics to stall for time while he waits for Joshua to find the lawyer he really wants.
  Judge Weems: Mr. Bolt, do you know what they say about a man who represents himself?
  Jason: Yes sir, that he has a fool for a client. Though I've also heard it said, sir, that the good Lord protects fools.
• Harmon Rabb had to defend himself a couple of times in JAG.
• One Kenan & Kel episode featured Kenan suing a tuna cannery for 10 million dollars after finding a screw in his tuna. Wanting to keep all the money to himself rather than paying a percentage of it to any lawyer, he represented himself. Assuming a lawyer could have persuaded Kenan to settle for one million dollars as the cannery proposed, Kenan was really a fool in that case since it turns out the tuna company was innocent, and the real culprit — if by accident — was actually Kel.
  Kel: [crying on the stand] I DID IT! IT WAS ME! I... DROPPED THE SCREW... IN THE TUNA!
• In Kingdom, Simon Kingdom is arrested for faking his death and stealing a deceased client's identity. His brother Peter can't represent him for the reasons outlined in the trope description, but Simon also happens to be a solicitor and chooses to represent himself. This result is an incredibly frustrating interrogation session where he roleplays "consulting with" and "advising" himself. A later episode shows the dangers of emotional involvement when Lyle tries to act for his family opposing their local council's attempts to redevelop neighborhood green space.
• L.A. Law had a more justified example than most in the episode "Beauty and Obese." The client was a lawyer herself and hired the firm to file a discrimination lawsuit against another firm after they fired her because she was overweight. When she decides to represent herself during the closing arguments, main character Michael does try to talk her out of it, but she counters that what better way to convince the jury (and, she admits, convince herself) that she's a capable and qualified attorney in spite of her weight than to show them directly that she is. It works, and they rule in her favor.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • One episode involves a man who has this trope quoted at him by the judge. This client wasn't so foolish — he walks away with an acquittal, although he is later rearrested.
  • More than once, SVU has also had the particularly nasty variant where the person representing him or herself is a rapist or pedophile and gets to cross-examine their own victim, over the strenuous (but usually futile) objections of the ADA. (Sadly, this is Truth in Television — the issue of defendants in abuse cases going pro se and cross-examining their own victims is still an ongoing fight.)
• It's actually subverted in Law & Order Prime. Defendants will occasionally represent themselves, but rarely to their own detriment. When they are convicted, it is for the same reason the represented defendants are. Some notable cases are Phillip Swann, Marty Winston, Victor Vargas Moreno, Richard Morriston, Catherine Waxman, Drew Seeley, Susan Boyd, Phil Christie, Harold Jensen, Mark Paul Kopell, Mousah Salim, Simon Vilanis, Leland Barnes, Davey Buckley, Gordon Samuels, and James Smith.
• Law & Order: UK:
  • James Steel successfully defends himself against charges of "perverting the course of justice". Of course, James is a brilliant lawyer who spent many years in defense, so it wasn't exactly a terrible decision, to begin with anyway.
  • The plot of "Defence" also mirrors that of "Pro Se" in the original Law and Order, although the mentally ill defendant here is much Darker and Edgier, showing no remorse for his murders, even though they occurred amidst a schizophrenic delusion.
• Married... with Children:
  • Al was sued when his children caused a car crash and he decided he didn't need a lawyer. The judge ruled against him and he was forced to pay for damages. To avoid being arrested for not paying, Al decided to go into hiding but was run over by someone who, according to the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, paid Al's debt as a way to settle.
  • In another episode, a burglar broke into Al's house and Al punched him. The burglar sued Al for $50,000 and Al considered the case too much of a Frivolous Lawsuit to hire a lawyer. When Al lost, he decided to make it $100,000 by punching the thief again, which allowed Al to sue the thief, claiming to have broken his hand at the thief's face. Completely Hollywood Law, of course.
  • The infamous banned episode, "I'll See You in Court". Al and Peggy sue a love motel after finding a videotape of Steve and Marcy having sex in secret. Steve and Marcy also sue together as they think Al and Peggy were also videotaped. Steve convinces Al not to hire a lawyer because they feel the case is open and shut. The trial itself shows the videotape of the Rhoadeses having a long sex tape (going hours long) while the Bundys' is only a few seconds long. The results are inverted and played with. While Steve did not do a good job, the jury found that because they had sex on tape, awarded the Rhoades with what they asked while the Bundys got nothing because "they didn't have sex".
• On the Martin (1992) episode, "No Justice, No Peace", Martin gets a parking ticket due to running a stop sign and decides to fight it in court by representing himself. Not only does he badger his own witnesses, his friends who were in the car with him, but when it becomes obvious that he's going to lose, he tries to plead insanity. In a parking ticket case. Then, not only does the jury find him guilty in record time, but he also has to pay both the parking ticket and the extra $200 in court costs.
• In Matlock, the eponymous Simple Country Lawyer did this a couple of times.
• The Mentalist:
  • In the season 4 premiere, Jane chooses to represent himself, in a trial for a murder that he freely admits to. He's acquitted.
  • Before that, the phrase itself is briefly mentioned-
    Cho: If you represent yourself, you're an idiot.
    Jane: Actually, it was "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client."
• On My Name Is Earl, Joy cannot afford an attorney when she faces charges for grand theft auto and kidnapping, and life in prison (because of this being her "third strike"). The court appoints an attorney for her, but Joy doesn't want this attorney because a) the attorney is a woman and b) she's deaf, and insults her. Joy decides to represent herself but finds that she doesn't understand criminal law. So she decides to go back and beg the attorney to take on the case.
• Subverted in The New Statesman: B'Stard sacks his counsel, his fellow MP, and usual lackey Piers Fletcher-Dervish, and does a better job representing himself because Piers is an idiot who only qualified as a barrister through family connections. And the whole case was a sham anyway.
• In The Odd Couple's many court episodes, Felix always wants to represent himself in court and was nearly always incompetent at it, with one spectacular exception while questioning an assuming accuser, Mr. Hugo, in "The Dog Story." His accused crime was "dognapping"; Felix showed how much of an abusive trainer said the accuser was to the dog in question, that the court only fined Felix one dollar (on the grounds he had pure motives for keeping the dog from the trainer, hence "mitigating circumstances" for Felix's ruling of "guilty" from Oscar's admitted "guilty" plea that cost three hundred dollars).
• Our Miss Brooks: In "Trial By Jury" (a remake of the radio episode "Traffic Court Reckless Driving"), Miss Brooks' defends herself in court after being given a ticket for "speeding, going through a red light, reckless driving, driving on the sidewalk, and hitting a fruit stand. Miss Brooks' expertise as an English teacher instead of a lawyer is evident here, at one point she recites Portia's speech from The Merchant of Venice. Unfortunately, Miss Brooks' defense is doomed from the start as Madison High School's principal Mr. Conklin is on the jury. And he's furious at having to abandon plans for a fishing trip "just because some stubborn female insists on a jury trial for a traffic ticket!" Still Mr. Conklin is at least partially impressed by Miss Brooks' recitation:
  Mr. Conklin: Bravo. Bravo. AND GUILTY AS CHARGED!
• The Practice:
  • Joey Heric decides to defend himself in his second murder trial after growing unhappy with Bobby. The judge permits this, although with Bobby staying to counsel him if necessary. At first, he does well, though later he gets outmaneuvered by Helen, with Bobby taking over as his lawyer again.
  • In "Pro Se" Eleanor gets a client who insists on defending himself when she won't put up the defense he wants. With her as standby counsel, he does a surprisingly good job, even getting acquitted though after he escaped from custody, killing a guard in doing so.
• Red Dwarf:
  • As the setup of the following gag:
    Rimmer: If only I'd hired a smarter lawyer, instead of the brain-dead, pompous, stupid-haired git I ended up with.
    Lister: You defended yourself!
  • It also happens in "Justice", again with Rimmer, who kept attempting to object to Kryten's statements despite Kryten being his defense attorney. Though it's a bit more understandable this time around, as Kryten's defense consisted of "Rimmer is too stupid and incompetent to have been responsible for the crime he's been accused of."
• In 1995, Saturday Night Live did an opening skit parodying the Real Life pro se defense of Colin Ferguson, who was then on trial for murder (referring to himself in the third person throughout). The actual defense was, if anything, more ridiculous. Not surprisingly, given the overwhelming evidence against him, Ferguson was convicted.
• One of the best examples of why this is a bad idea is the first season finale of Scream Queens. The Chanels are on trial and the evidence is actually pretty flimsy. But their decision to defend themselves backfires as Chanel's "strategy" involves simply yelling at people and demanding to be set free. Even then, it looks like they'll be acquitted...until Chanel stands up in court to bad mouth every member of the jury who then turns in a guilty verdict. If the Chanels had just bothered to get a half-decent lawyer, they would have gotten out scot-free.
• Shark: Sebastian Stark prosecuted a serial killer who decided to defend himself and got Off on a Technicality because the key witness died before he had a chance to cross-examine her and another technicality prohibited Stark from proving the defendant induced her into suicide. The killer became his own client again when he was accused of killing another woman. He was convicted but Stark told him the victim had actually killed herself and he made it look like a homicide just to get him convicted for it. The killer later represents himself again at his appeal, but knows he can't win — it was only a cover to escape.
• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law:
  • "The People vs. Emil Blonsky": Discussed when prosecutor Dennis sues Runa. The judge tells Dennis he is not able to ask questions to his witness, due to the fact that he is not self representing.
  • "Mean, Green, and Straight Poured Into These Jeans": Jen initially promises Holliway that she'll deal with Titania, but he bluntly shuts that down and has Mallory assigned as her attorney to defend her against Titania's lawsuit, with Mallory directly referencing the saying during their initial meeting. Jen wisely avoids admitting that she would have tried to take care of it herself. Titania, who tries to speak out on her own behalf several times and has to be told not to by her attorney.
  • "Ribbit and Rip It": It looks as if Luke Jacobson is going to try and represent himself against Jen and Eugene. Just as Jen is telling Eugene they'll probably win Matt Murdock aka Daredevil walks in and reveals he's Luke's counsel, he was just running late.
• In one episode of Sledge Hammer!, Sledge gets accused of murder and decides to defend himself. Right before the big surprise reveal at the end, the judge asks the Prosecution if they have anything to say and the prosecutor responds that Sledge has already made all their points for them.
• It is revealed on Star Trek: Voyager that the Klingons have a variation on this; at one point, B'Lanna Torres relates to the Doctor the Klingon proverb "The doctor who operates on himself has a p'tahk for a patient."
• Suits:
  • The series presents a corollary to this: if your wife is suing for divorce, do not hire your brother as your lawyer. When Marcus, Harvey's brother wants Harvey to represent him in his divorce, Harvey points out that it is a horrible idea but Marcus guilts him into taking the case. Harvey is too emotionally involved in the matter and tries to approach it as a concerned brother rather than a lawyer. Reality ensues and he is promptly sanctioned for trying to talk to his sister-in-law without her lawyer present. It does not help that once Harvey realizes what really prompted the divorce, he sides with his sister-in-law despite being ethically obligated to side with his brother, the client.
  • The taxi driver from "Bail Out" threatened to sue Harvey's driver. But he's not your standard fool, considering the following Badass Boast. (Of course, he loses in the end, but still.)
    Driver: I sued for my citizenship, so I have a very special appreciation for the law. I wiped the floor with the US government, counselor. I'm gonna do the same with you.
• In Trailer Park Boys, Ricky does this twice; the first time is offscreen and... doesn't exactly go in his favor, whereas the second time is onscreen and somehow works perfectly for him.
• On Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Reverend Wayne represents himself. His defense consists almost entirely of Courtroom Antics, but since the prosecutors are even more incompetent it seems to be working out for him until Kimmy figures out how to get to him.
• Will & Grace: In one episode Grace attempts to have Will help her sue a client who refused to pay because she made design choices without consulting him. The client is a partner at a prestigious law firm who ends up hiring Will and assigning him to the suit. Grace attempts to represent herself and, naturally, makes an absolute fool of herself. The judge even calls her out for misusing every legal term she attempts to cite.

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