The high cost of lawyers' fees has resulted to a rise of Americans handling their own court cases, with assistance from legal self-help sites and groups.

The kind of self-handled cases has gone beyond civil cases involving small amounts of money to domestic problems, divorces and child custody matters, according to the National Center for State Courts.

To help lawyerless Americans, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have set up self-help centers. An indicator of the growing acceptance of self-handled litigation is the 43,000 emails, phone and walk-in inquiries received in 2007 by the Hennepin County Self-Help Center in Minnesota. It is the largest number since the program started 11 years ago.

In San Diego, the number of unrepresented party in cases pending before the family court went up 70 percent in 2004 from 54 percent in the early 1990s. A 2004 study by the New Hampshire Supreme Court task force said 85 percent of civil cases in district court and 48 percent in superior court were tried without lawyers.

Aside from the cost, some people with lawsuits opt not to hire a lawyer because of the ease of legal research offered by the Internet, according to the National, a magazine published by the Canadian Bar Association.