UPDATED 9.28AM: Lawyers say the influence of the internet is creeping into the courtroom with litigants increasingly educating themselves online as they gear up for legal battles.

But they say trials have had to be aborted because of their lack of expertise.

The difficulty of getting legal aid's been pinpointed as one reason why litigants are turning to the world wide web to arm themselves.

Labour's justice spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern says legal aid has dropped from about $60 million to $40 million in the civil court arena, and you have to be earning $22,000 or less to be eligible for it.

"It's much more of a concern if people are doing this not out of choice, but out of desperation."

Ardern says the judiciary has raised this issue because it's clogging up the civil court system.

Chief High Court Judge Justice Helen Winkelmann has said the legal aid criteria was too low.

She's warned that unrepresented litigants are a serious challenge to the civil justice system.

Ardern says the issue's been raised by senior members of the judiciary - and it's something we should be concerned about.

"Our court is simply as it stands not designed for people to navigate through it on their own

"It really does raise issues over whether people are adequately able to access justice."

New Zealand Law Society President Chris Moore says there have been changes in the legal aid system so that it's much harder to get now.

"Judges will go to extreme lengths, and rightly so, to ensure that self-represented litigants are getting a fair crack at the justice system."

The availability of information on the internet has also contributed to the increase in self-representation, but world-wide there's another reason.

"The process is now a far more complex. The law itself is more complex," Moore said.

"That makes it more expensive. It's harder to access the justice system."