Do Lawyers Really Believe Their Own Hype and Should They?: A Natural Experiment (original) (raw)
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The Apolitical Lawyer: Experimental Evidence of a Framing Eect
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Behavioural law and economics has established a burgeoning research agenda investigating the impact of bias and heuristics on legal decision-making. One of the most important behavioural contributions concerns the impact of framing on choice. The present article expands this line of scholarship by developing a novel hypothesis under which lawyers' attachment to objectivity and neutrality is assumed to militate against frames challenging the profession's underlying norms. More specifically, the 'apolitical hypothesis' expects the attachment of legally irrelevant political motivation to legal arguments to decrease their attractiveness. The hypothesis is tested in an experimental setting accounting for a varying degree of legal indeterminacy in the domain of European Union law. The experimental results show support for the hypothesis: a political frame made law students 12% to 24% more likely to select the 'apolitical' legal option.
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Belton, Thomson, & Dhami (2014) lawyer & non-lawyer framing
Settling a legal dispute out of court is typically a good result for both parties. However, many disputes do not settle: the presence of cognitive biases, such as those observed through framing manipulations, is thought to be one of the many reasons for settlement failure. The present study used quantitative and qualitative data to compare the impact of a gain-or loss-framed hypothetical civil litigation scenario on settlement decisions made by lawyers and other nonlawyer professionals. A significant effect of framing was found for both groups. As predicted, both nonlawyers and lawyers were much more likely to settle their claim in the gain scenario than in the loss scenario. This finding was supported by the qualitative data: risk-averse comments were more frequent in the gain frame whereas risk-seeking statements were more common in the loss frame. There was also evidence that lawyers may be less affected by framing than nonlawyers, although a smaller difference was observed than in previous studies. In addition, lawyers were more likely than nonlawyers to consider the expected financial value of the litigation in making their decision. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest avenues for future research.
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International Journal for Court Administration, 2018
This article analyses the impact of attorneys on the outcome of judicial decisions in civil cases. We currently have little quantitative information about the effect of attorneys on the outcome of civil cases due to (i) the nonrandom pairing of attorneys and cases and (ii) the difficulty in accurately defining what a favorable decision in a civil case is. The Office of the Solicitor General of the Union in Brazil presents a unique research opportunity, since it assigns cases among its attorneys on a random basis and has standardized rules to record outcomes of civil cases. We analyzed the work performed by 386 Federal Attorneys and their impact on 30,821 judicial decisions. Significant win-rate differences among attorneys were detected in half of the 70 teams surveyed. The fact that attorneys achieve different outcomes, despite working in the same type of cases, indicates how judicial decisions can be affected by the work of an attorney in the civil area. No statistical correlation between attorney experience and outcome of civil cases was detected.
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The Author would like to thank John Perkins and Mairin O'Steen for their tireless video recording and Amanda Kjellen for her extensive and cheerful research. She would also like to thank Professor Linda Edwards for her invaluable advice and Professors Jeremy Counseller and Tracy McGaugh for their aid in collecting survey information. Finally, she would like to thank her husband, Dennis Salzmann, for his insight and support.
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The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2006
How seriously do attorneys consider the biases of their retained mental health experts? Participants in this pilot study included 40 attorneys, randomly selected from a pool of members of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, who rated-for their biasing potential-several situations that might affect the behavior of an expert. A Rasch analysis produced a linear scale as to the perceived biasing potential of these different items from most to least biasing. Among other results, the study suggests that attorneys do view mental health experts who work on both sides of cases as being more balanced in their testimony. However, they also indicated that they have a preference for using individuals who repeatedly testify for one side. Working for only one side in both civil and criminal cases yielded large scaled values. Additional comments offered by respondents indicated that: (1) an opposing expert also serving as the litigant's treater and (2) an opposing expert being viewed as a "hir...