Postscript to "Pro Se" Segment: Do Your Research (Right!)

I know I'm very late to the party here, but I thought I'd add this as an example of what not to do when you're going pro se:

Wikipedia Too Malleable To Be Reliable Evidence

A New Jersey appellate case chastised a judge for allowing a collections agency to use Wikipedia as proof that they owned a debt they were trying to enforce. In case you aren't completely up to date on Wikipedia's model of creating content, anyone can edit pages at any time. Most of the time if you make an edit to a page and it's wrong or vandalism, it gets changed back because people watch the edits as they are updated. However, this does not stop anyone from editing a page, printing it out, and asserting that it's "the truth" because Wikipedia said so.

The moral of the story is that there are certain things which are reliable and admissible in Court. Wikipedia is not one of them. If you're in New Jersey and you want to check out New Jersey cases which might be of use to you, go to lawlibrary.rutgers.edu. Check out all of the resources there- lots of them. Cases are definitely reliable; with anything else, you're pushing your luck.

It's always, always better to hear it "from the horse's mouth." Things that judges say (in cases) are good. Things that witnesses say, live, in person, are good. Written documents are less good. Wikipedia? No good.