^I know that it's a very poor idea to represent yourself if you have any other option, but it's still better than being on trial in a 100% rigged system, such as the USSR had.
All this complexity regarding law makes me think of Phillip Greenspun's research into computer-aided law: http://philip.greenspun.com/research/area-exam.text
(Holy cow has this gotten off the original topic. Sorry everyone!)
I concede the point that it can't be totally inaccessible, but the it seems like farmers with hunting rifles going after professional soldiers. Sure, sometimes it works out or you get lucky, but that's not the norm.
Although come to think of it, the public defender situation isn't much better, is it.
Something like legal representation isn't so much deeply fundamental as it is a pragmatic and institutional response to the problem of checking arbitrary prosecution. We would drop it if we could find some better way of checking those prosecutors.
Imagine the effect of a government program intended to assist stranded motorists (suppose that the program maintained a fleet of trucks which carried common spare tires, gas, compressed air and the like). Fewer people would stop to help, and that program would function about as well as any other government program does, which is another way of saying that it would work a lot worse than any private roadside assistance program known today.