PHOENIX -- Standing at a lectern in a federal courtroom here in June, Susan Hudock turned to a jury of four men and four women and, her hands slightly shaking, said, "I have to tell you, I'm terrified."

With that, Ms. Hudock began her opening statement for a trial that culminated a four-year legal battle against Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc., now part of Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis SA.

Ms. Hudock isn't a lawyer. She is a former drug-sales representative who suffers from shingles, a painful virus. When pain medication impaired her ability to drive, the company says she went on unauthorized leave and fired her. She filed suit, claiming the world's third-largest drug maker had violated her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Prompted by rising legal fees and helped by free information on the Internet, Ms. Hudock joined a growing number of people in even complex legal disputes who are bucking the adage that only a fool has himself for a client.

There have always been accused criminals who insist on doing that, and self-representation long has been common in traffic and small-claims courts. Pro se litigants, as they are known, are also becoming increasingly common in divorce courts.

Now the phenomenon has spread elsewhere. Most pro se cases are believed to be filed in state courts, but data are hard to come by. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts counted 21,615 nonprisoner pro se cases in the 12 months ended last Sept. 30, the first time it kept a total. There were nearly 20 percent more nonprisoner private pro se appeals filed in the federal courts in 2004 than in 1993.

"The recent surge in self-represented litigation is unprecedented and shows no signs of abating," the Conference of State Court Administrators said in a report in 2000. The increase has led some courts to begin programs to help such litigants, and law firms are experimenting with performing discrete tasks without full representation. Blocks from where Ms. Hudock tried her case, the bankruptcy court in January set up a room with desks, forms and guides for pro se litigants, who make up 30 percent of its cases.

The legal profession is divided about the trend, some arguing that these litigants ought to have the same access to the courts as those who can afford to hire a lawyer. Others rue the presence of these novices in the courtroom, arguing they clog busy court dockets because of their unfamiliarity with the rules.

Ms. Hudock shows how far an untrained person can get in navigating the labyrinthine legal system -- and the risks of doing so.

There's little dispute about the events that led to her dismissal:

Ms. Hudock, now 46 years old, worked for Aventis for 10 years, becoming an award-winning sales rep for its allergy drug, Allegra. In 1999, she was diagnosed with shingles, a skin-blistering nervous-system disease triggered by an awakening of the dormant virus that causes chicken pox. On occasion, it causes debilitating pain and the symptoms can last for years.

She continued working through 1999, selling $1.6 million of Allegra that year and earning $85,000. In mid-2000, she took a one-month short-term disability leave. After returning to work, she says she was sometimes in too much pain to drive, so her husband, Tom Hodge, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army special forces, taxied her to sales calls in her company car.

A supervisor chastised Ms. Hudock for allowing him to drive her. The company told her other sales representatives had complained that it gave her an unfair advantage and the company said the practice exposed it to liability. In November 2000, she began taking pain drugs that can impair driving and again went on short-term disability.

Aventis continued paying her but urged her to apply for long-term disability benefits with UnumProvident, which handles that coverage for the company. Unum denied her claim. (She appealed unsuccessfully and then paid an attorney $30,000 to sue Unum, later settling for a sum she is barred under the terms of the settlement from disclosing.) Unum declined to comment.

In July 2001, Aventis told Ms. Hudock in a letter that she was on unauthorized leave. Fearing she'd be fired, she filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law requires employers to make "reasonable accommodations" to allow disabled people to perform nonessential job-related tasks. Aventis fired her two weeks later.

The EEOC, while not ruling on the merits of the case, issued her a letter giving her the right to sue. She retained Phoenix attorney Rosemary Cook, who filed the suit. By May 2003, Ms. Hudock was having trouble paying Ms. Cook's fees, having already paid $16,000 and owing $2,400 more. "I am in debt up to my eyeballs," Ms. Hudock told Ms. Cook via email. Eventually, Ms. Cook advised Ms. Hudock to get a new job. "I sincerely believe you need to get on with your life," Ms. Cook told her in an email.

After Ms. Hudock told Ms. Cook she'd go it alone, the lawyer told her, "You'll never survive summary judgment," Ms. Hudock recalls, referring to a routine defense motion to dismiss. Ms. Cook didn't return calls for comment.

Little in her background helped Ms. Hudock in her new legal quest. She'd majored in English and music at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., joining ROTC and then serving three years in the Army. Her first job after the army was selling beauty-school programs, then memberships in the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. She started working for a drug company in the late 1980s.

In May 2004, a large package arrived at Ms. Hudock's doorstep -- Aventis's summary-judgment motion, arguing that her allegations, even if true, didn't break the law.

On her computer at home, Ms. Hudock searched for "Americans with Disabilities Act" on Google. That led her to FindLaw, a vast legal Web site. A few clicks later, she arrived at a Cornell University Law School site with access to court opinions and evidence rules. She narrowed her search to review how judges had interpreted "reasonable accommodation."

She searched the Web for each cited opinion. After reading a few, she concluded that Aventis was on shaky ground. "I had to ... find out what the courts really did say about the law and apply the proper facts to my interpretation of the law," she recalls.

Ms. Hudock downloaded legal-writing software and modeled her brief after Aventis's. Her legal brain trust included her husband and her brother, John, a former drug rep who is now a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in California. They pulled all-nighters on long-distance calls helping her hone her arguments. Three weeks later, they dropped her response off at the courthouse -- and on Jan. 6, U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell denied Aventis's motion. Ms. Hudock repeated the process multiple times in response to pretrial motions by Aventis seeking, among other things, to prevent her from introducing her awards into evidence and to preclude her from mentioning the company's nationality. Ms. Hudock also prepared some of her own, such as a final pretrial order, a trial brief and a proposed jury verdict form.

Though she occasionally picked up attorney tips on the Web -- "Lawyers like to boast," she says -- she never sought professional help. At the time, she didn't know that bar associations in several states, including Washington, Maine and Arizona, had started allowing lawyers to offer services short of full representation, including motion-writing, one-shot courtroom appearances and procedural advice. Some lawyers chafe at the practice, in part because attorneys have traditionally been honor-bound to represent their clients completely, or not at all.

In March, Judge Campbell set the trial for the week of June 20, allotting her 13 hours to present her case and Aventis 11 hours -- a fairly routine practice that forces both sides to keep on point, but a real challenge for a novice.

There are few places for nonlawyers to turn when preparing for trial, in part because only 3 percent of all civil cases end up before a jury. So Ms. Hudock found a guide to writing opening statements online, studied the television series "Law & Order: Trial by Jury" and pored over federal court rules.

She issued subpoenas to former Aventis employees with whom she felt she had good relations, including onetime supervisors Robin Harris and Laurie Lamson, though she neglected to go over their expected testimony with them ahead of time.

On Monday, June 20, Ms. Hudock entered the courtroom with her husband, brother and his best friend, Kevin Pang, who took a week off from work to lend whatever help he could during the trial. She immediately confronted a curve ball: Due to witnesses' schedules, she had to reorder her presentation. She planned to call her husband and brother early, but they were pushed to the end, which meant they couldn't be with her for much of the trial, because witnesses can't hear each others' testimony.

After the jury was selected, the court broke for lunch. So nervous she felt sick, Ms. Hudock ate only a banana.

Back in court, Judge David Campbell told Ms. Hudock to give her opening statement. Breathing heavily at times, she told the jury she wasn't a lawyer and described her ailment, which still causes her pain and has left her back covered in blisters. "I'm a disabled individual and I'm covered under the act," she said, adding that Aventis should have let her husband drive her because that was a "reasonable accommodation."

Aventis's lawyer, Anthony Romano, framed the case narrowly: Driving was an essential function of her job. The law required accommodation only for nonessential tasks, so Aventis wasn't required to provide any, he said. Lawyers for Aventis and the company's spokesman declined to comment for this article.

On her first witness, Ms. Hudock faltered. She called a video technician in an attempt to bring into evidence a videotape of an Aventis awards ceremony where her success was praised. Mr. Romano objected, arguing that Aventis didn't dispute her sales prowess. The judge said the technician's testimony wasn't needed.

Ms. Hudock's next witness: herself.

On the witness stand, she held up an Aventis document applauding her performance to Judge Campbell. "How do I get this admitted?" she asked.

"You need to ask yourself what the document is, to identify it (and) give the defense a chance to object," the judge explained.

So began a routine that lasted for two hours: "I'm going to ask myself the question," she'd say, before stating the query and then saying, "I'm going to answer," and doing so.

She testified that her manager forced her to go on short-term disability without discussing whether her husband could drive her. Anticipating that Mr. Romano would attack her husband's role as inappropriate, she asked herself if he ever discussed product information with physicians.

"No," said Ms. Hudock.

"Did he ever handle sample inventory," Ms. Hudock asked herself.

"No. My husband never handled a sample," Ms. Hudock answered emphatically, her voice rising.

"Did I know of my rights at this time?" Ms. Hudock asked herself.

"No," she boomed into the microphone, her voice echoing.

Mr. Romano repeatedly objected to her "shouting" during the trial. The judge told her to "modulate your tone."

Ms. Hudock strayed from her main point -- the reasonable accommodation argument -- and to explain why she was lax in responding to the company's demand for documentation of her medical condition she delved into matters that preoccupied her in 2001, including her father's death, Aventis's failure to send sympathy flowers, her mother's hospitalization and her doctor's decision to relocate to another city.

On cross-examination on Tuesday, Mr. Romano and Ms. Hudock sparred over his rapid-fire questions. He complained when her answers went beyond the question, so the judge told her to limit her responses, saying she could elaborate when it was her turn to ask questions again. Thereafter, Ms. Hudock repeatedly told Mr. Romano, "Hold on one second" so she could jot down notes to use when she went back to questioning herself.

"I guess I'm getting frazzled with all the roles," she said.

Then Mr. Romano handed her a letter she had written to Unum, Aventis's long-term-disability provider. "Safely operating a vehicle is material to my position," she read.

Ms. Hudock said she didn't mean "material" in the context of the disabilities law. But Mr. Romano hammered the point, asking if she'd committed a crime by misleading an insurance company. She said no.

Next, he nonchalantly laid a trap, asking her to describe her job's "essential" elements. She said they included bonding with doctors, keeping apprised of new drugs, writing reports and, "if I was well enough, I would drive my car." To make sure the point wasn't lost, Mr. Romano repeated her testimony. "I said it, yes, but it wasn't a legal opinion," Ms. Hudock parried.

"I slipped up," she said later, outside the courtroom. "I gave him that."

When Ms. Hudock called Mr. Harris, one of her former supervisors, she adopted Mr. Romano's tack, asking one question after another about whether the job was about selling or driving.

"What if a blind person could sell, would you take the professional driver or the blind salesperson?" she asked.

"In our industry, because the person has to drive and negotiate, I don't know of any company that could hire this person to do that job," he replied.

"Do you think a blind person with a personal assistant could?" Ms. Hudock asked.

"I suspect that they could," Mr. Harris admitted.

"So driving is not all that essential," Ms. Hudock shouted.

Judge Campbell interrupted: "Ms. Hudock, you need to ask a question and not argue with the witness."

In her final parry, she tried to show that she was forced to go on leave against her will. In a bid to demonstrate that, she handed Mr. Harris a document and asked if it showed that a disability-benefits packet was sent to her home the day before she first called Aventis's health-services division to ask about the benefits.

"That's correct," he testified.

"Nothing further," Ms. Hudock concluded.

"I did really well," she beamed outside the courtroom. "Did you see I pulled that blind question out of nowhere? I felt like a real lawyer."

She stumbled on Wednesday, when questioning Ms. Lamson, her final supervisor at Aventis. She asked Ms. Lamson to identify a document that listed the job responsibilities upon which Ms. Hudock was evaluated; it didn't list driving. Ms. Lamson didn't recognize the document, so the judge didn't allow it as evidence.

To regroup, Ms. Hudock asked Ms. Lamson, "Are pharmaceutical sales representatives ... professional drivers or professional salespeople?" Ms. Hudock thought the answer was the latter, so Ms. Lamson's answer shocked her: "I think you have to be both."

Later that day, Ms. Hudock called her husband to the stand. After he was sworn in, her voice quaked and tears welled in her eyes. She asked the judge for a moment and turned to Mr. Pang, the family friend who had sat beside her throughout the trial. "You want the truth," he whispered. "You want peace of mind. It's important to get it together. Now is not the time." She composed herself and began questioning her spouse about her condition and how he came to drive her to appointments.

"Laurie Lamson was a disaster," Ms. Hudock said as she left the courthouse that afternoon.

That evening, Ms. Hudock and Mr. Pang evaluated the trial so far. Sitting on her living-room floor surrounded by boxes of court papers, Ms. Hudock lamented forgetting to ask anyone whether Aventis could have put her in a territory that didn't require driving, such as a hospital or an urban area.

With less than five hours left to present her case, Mr. Pang advised, "Sue, we may have to pick and choose witnesses, or get right to the point." They decided to cut her husband's testimony short and to have her brother -- a drug sales rep in the 1980s -- testify about sales jobs that didn't require driving.

She rested her case on Thursday. The defense called no witnesses. With the jury excused, the judge, Ms. Hudock, Mr. Romano and Aventis's in-house lawyer, Diane Duvall, discussed jury instructions in open court -- a critical moment in every trial that defines exactly what each side must prove to prevail.

Ms. Hudock had memorized model jury instructions she found online. She didn't know adversaries routinely tried to tailor them to their advantage. Ms. Duvall proposed telling jurors they could side with Aventis if they concluded that it acted in good faith, among other changes. Ms. Hudock asked for time to analyze the proposals, saying, "I'm a little out of my element." Judge Campbell declined Ms. Hudock's request for more time and approved most of Ms. Duvall's changes, some of which he said helped Ms. Hudock.

During the 30-minute drive to court Friday morning, Ms. Hudock demanded silence to focus on her closing, which she had finished drafting at 2 a.m.

"Four years ago," she told the jury, "I could never imagine myself standing here." Composed and confident, she recounted key testimony and then held up her performance review: "Look and see if I was evaluated for how well I drove," she said. As her 40-minute statement wound down, she added: "Think about why I'm here -- to make sure that no matter how big you are ... we're equal in the eyes of the law."

The jury began deliberating at noon. Ms. Hudock ate her first lunch of the week, a tuna steak.

Just after 1 p.m., the Hudock team learned the jury had sent the judge a note. "Does this happen often?" she wondered aloud. The jury wanted to see her job description -- the very document she had tried but failed to have entered. Even though her job evaluation was part of the record, the judge wrote back that the job description wasn't in evidence.

Still, the Hudock team saw a hopeful sign. "That's so smart," Mr. Pang told the others. "They got the story." Ms. Hudock, her feet resting on a waiting-room table, offered two thumbs-up. But her mood soon darkened. Lying on the carpeted floor to relieve a pain shooting down her leg from her illness, she clasped her hands in prayer. "I'm so tired," she said.

At 1:39, her brother bolted into the room: "There's a verdict!"

Surprised by the quick decision, Ms. Hudock mouthed, "Is this normal?" The foursome did a group hug and headed to court.

The jurors filed in without making eye contact with either side. A court deputy read their verdict: "Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc. is not liable to plaintiff Susan A. Hudock." Ms. Hudock stood still, expressionless.

After dismissing the jury, Judge Campbell said, "I want to tell you Ms. Hudock, you did a very good job. I've seen lawyers in this court who have not done as well as you."

Outside, Ms. Hudock mulled whether to continue fighting. "The only way I'd go on is if I had a sharp-eyed legal-eagle" lawyer to help, she said.

At home, she powered on her computer, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, began clicking in search of information about jury instructions and the appeals process.

Five days later, she notified Aventis that she would appeal. She plans to represent herself.