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Notes -
The UK bar does something very similar. If you're a company being sued in the high court it's a criminal offense + contempt of court if you don't hire a barrister to represent you, regardless of your size or financial position. Fortunately you can recover costs if you win, but they are rarely 100% of the actual costs (more like 60-70%).
Apart from the split profession in England*, which doesn't actually add much to the cost because junior barristers are cheaper than experienced litigation solicitors, this is true basically everywhere. A company can't self-represent (it has no mouth to speak in court and no hands to sign documents) and non-lawyer employees are banned from representing a company almost everywhere (for "grownup Court" this includes England, Scotland, and AFAIK all 50 US States). The English system at least allows non-lawyer employees to represent their corporate employer in small claims court, which not every US state does.
* Solicitors do general legal work, and are not usually allowed to argue in the courts that handle high-value civil cases and serious crimes. Barristers do trial work, and are prohibited from doing certain types of administrative work in a way which means only a sophisticated client can hire one directly. The normal way you litigate is to hire solicitors who will handle pre-litigation correspondence, file the case, deal with discovery and settlement negotiations, and hire a barrister for you to handle trial prep and the trial itself once it becomes clear that the case will probably go to trial.
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