I don't know about other states, but in California if you sue a corporation in small claims court, they can NOT send an attorney:
Corporation or other legal entity — A corporation or other legal entity (that is not a natural person) can be represented by a regular employee, an officer, or a director; a partnership can be represented by a partner or regular employee of the partnership. The representative may not be an attorney or person whose only job is to represent the party in small claims court. An attorney may appear to represent a law firms as long as that attorney is a general partner of the law firm or is an officer of the corporation. However, in both instances, all the other members of the partnership and all the other officers of the corporations have to be attorneys as well.[1]
Apparently this is not uncommon even in normal court.
I sat on a jury in TX where a couple was suing an insurance company, and the insurance company wasn't represented by an attorney. It was really strange, because the first thing the gentleman does is stand up and spend 5 minutes explaining how he isn't an attorney but he regularly represents the insurance company for smaller claims (it was something like $20k IIRC). Then for the remainder of the next hour and a half or so he stumbled around with arguments against the couples slick lawyer. I guess the guy probably lost most of his cases (?) but its worth it to the insurance company to spend a few hundred bucks getting this guy to show up unprepared for an hour or two in the odd chance he could save them $20k every few dozen cases.
Corporation or other legal entity — A corporation or other legal entity (that is not a natural person) can be represented by a regular employee, an officer, or a director; a partnership can be represented by a partner or regular employee of the partnership. The representative may not be an attorney or person whose only job is to represent the party in small claims court. An attorney may appear to represent a law firms as long as that attorney is a general partner of the law firm or is an officer of the corporation. However, in both instances, all the other members of the partnership and all the other officers of the corporations have to be attorneys as well.[1]
[1] http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/small_claims/basic_info.s...