Click on the image for a closer look.
I realized later that nobody would have batted an eyelash if I had jumped straight to the front of the line under the "attorneys" sign, but at that point I wasn't actually thinking of myself as an "attorney," even though I had put "attorney in propia persona" (Latin for "fool for a client") on my letters.
Object lesson: when you "act as your own attorney," you are a bona-fide attorney, even if you've never set foot in a law school. Remember, law schools don't create attorneys, they qualify their students to pass exams to get licenses that allow them to get paid to act as an attorney for someone else.
Upon reaching the front of the line and showing this letter, I was issued this slip of paper that secured my space on the court calendar, appearing before Commissioner Heath in Courtroom D98:
The hearing was set for Tuesday, July 25, at 1:30pm. I had my first official court appearance! The "MDE" code indicates that it is a "Motion by the DEfense." Now I had my work cut out for me, as I began getting ready to handle all the contingencies that could come up during the hearing and prepare my formal motion.
It was at this point that I switched from using Microsoft Word to draft my documents and switched over to writing in Netscape Communicator and HTML. I'm glad I switched as early as I did, since it made building this website a heck of a lot easier - much less scanning!
Cribbing from sample court documents I found in the NMA Legal Defense Kit, I drafted a formal motion for discovery to present during the motion hearing.