Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

You need to submit a Substitution of Attorney form bringing in an attorney to represent you instead of doing it yourself. Otherwise my experience is that you will lose. I have never seen a pro se party beat a lawyer in court, in nearly 25 years of practice.

Your question doesn't make clear whether you are the defendant with a defense lawyer taking action you are not pleased with or the plaintiff dealing with the situation. If you are the defendant and you don't like what your lawyer is doing, tell him or her and if you can't achieve a meeting of the minds, get another lawyer. If the lawyer was retained by your insurance company, you may have a complicated situation that requires conferring with a separate attorney to sort out the details. If you are the plaintiff trying to respond to the defense lawyer's activities, what you are dealing with is something called bifurcation. That's a complicated bit of business and, quite frankly, something you need a lawyer to handle on your behalf.