Legal Clinic Provides Law Without Lawyers : Courts: Center assists people who choose to handle their own divorce and related matters.

With the phone ringing incessantly, Angie Lopez leans over the counter at the Family Law Self-Help Center and calmly explains to a 23-year-old father how to fill out a handful of child-support documents.

She darts to a file cabinet to retrieve another form while instructing a woman seeking a divorce to add her name to the sign-in sheet, already crowded with a dozen others wanting help with low-cost divorces.

“It gets kind of hectic in here,” Lopez says. “You have to have the mind frame of answering five questions at the same time.”

The popularity of the court-sponsored legal clinic, on the fourth floor of the Ventura courthouse, illustrates a growing trend toward self-representation in divorces.

Increasingly, couples filing for divorce or parents seeking changes in child custody are choosing to handle their own cases rather than hire a lawyer. In response, the Ventura County courts have launched a series of programs that provide free assistance to family-law litigants.

In addition to the Ventura self-help center, open four days a week, clinics staffed by a veteran attorney are available at the Simi Valley courthouse and at a legal center in Oxnard each week.

Court administrators recently hired a second legal advisor to run those centers--boosting the staff that provides one-on-one assistance to litigants trying to navigate the justice system by themselves.

“There is an enormous need for this service,” said advisor Susan Ratzkin, a longtime Thousand Oaks attorney specializing in divorce law. “The court system is very foreign to most people, and private attorneys are expensive.”

A divorce handled by a private attorney can cost between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on its complexity, Ratzkin said. By contrast, a litigant who goes it alone might spend a few hundred dollars.

In recent years, courts across California have seen such a dramatic increase in the number of so-called “pro per” litigants that it started to create problems.

Pro per--from a Latin phrase meaning “in one’s own person”--litigants, unfamiliar with legal terms and law, were arriving in Family Court confused and unprepared. This forced judges to spend precious time answering questions and correcting paperwork.

“People were really in over their heads,” said Ventura County Superior Court Judge John Smiley, who supervises Family Court. “We spent a lot of court time explaining to somebody what an income-and-expense declaration was. It really was fairly chaotic.”

Worried that the system was getting bogged down, and pro per litigants getting placed at a disadvantage, the state Legislature in 1996 required counties to hire a family law advisor for each courthouse.

In Ventura County, the courts hired longtime family law attorney Gay Conroy and launched a weekly pro per clinic Tuesday evenings. During the sessions, Conroy explained how to fill out forms and meet court deadlines, and generally outlined what the law requires of each litigant in a divorce case.

She also helped people seeking restraining orders against a violent partner or spouse. The night clinic generated such an enormous response that officials scrambled to recruit attorney volunteers to meet the demand.

“There was a need to help pro per litigants get access to the courts,” said Jeanne Caughell, an executive officer of the courts.

Caughell said the self-help center grew out of the evening clinic, which no longer exists. With the satellite clinics in Simi Valley and Oxnard also up and running, everyone who asks for help is served, she said.

When business became so brisk at the Ventura center--more than 3,300 people have signed in so far this year--Ratzkin was brought in. Lopez, a court clerk, was assigned to the clinic in June to help litigants with paperwork.

Ratzkin was a perfect fit. A specialist in child custody matters, Ratzkin had practiced family law in Thousand Oaks for 13 years before accepting the part-time position.

Now, she assists divorce court litigants once a week in Simi Valley and Oxnard. She also helps one day in Ventura.

“We explain to them very rudimentary concepts of due process,” she said. “Really, a big part of it is education.”

Some private attorneys have complained that the center is stealing their client base. But proponents say they are simply providing assistance to people who have already decided to handle a case themselves. When cases involve complicated property issues or contentious child custody disputes, they sometimes advise litigants to seek an attorney.

Generally, Ratzkin said, she and Conroy explain how the law works but don’t make recommendations or decisions on behalf of a litigant.

“We do not represent people,” Ratzkin said. “That is important to make clear.”

Standing at the self-help center counter recently, Oxnard resident Blair Martin, 23, listened closely as Lopez explained how to fill out the necessary forms in his divorce.

Martin, an emergency medical technician, decided he didn’t need a lawyer to request a change to his child support and custody arrangements. But he knew he needed some help with the paperwork.

“Some of us out there are kind of ignorant to the way the system works,” he said, calling the self-help center a valuable resource. “They can give you a non-biased answer to your questions, and that’s hard to find.”

While Martin collected his forms, Santa Paula resident Yolanda Onteveros, 39, waited in the hallway outside for her name to be called.

A day-care provider in the midst of a divorce, Onteveros said she could not afford a lawyer and was happy to find the pro per services instead.

“It helps people who don’t really know what they are doing,” she said. “It’s made it easier.”