Attorney Expertise, Litigant Success, and Judicial Decisionmaking in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract

In the U.S. legal system, litigants frequently retain counsel to represent their interests in civil cases, particularly when the stakes are high. Scholarly work and anecdotal evidence suggest that variation in the quality of advocacy has the potential to affect litigant success. We examine the relationship between attorney characteristics, case outcomes, and judicial voting in products liability decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Our analysis found some differences in the levels of experience and specialization of counsel representing defendants and plaintiffs and that counsel expertise was, at times, related to litigant success. In a multivariate model of decisionmaking, judges were less likely to support the position of plaintiffs when they were represented by counsel appearing for the first time before the circuit. When defendants were represented by attorneys who did not specialize in relevant areas of the law, judges were more likely to decide in favor of the plaintiff. These findings suggest that those attorneys who do not meet a minimum threshold of expertise will be less likely to find judicial support for their client than other attorneys. Such attorneys may be less successful as a result of their lack of familiarity with the law and appellate process or because they make poor choices regarding the likelihood of success on appeal.

Separate Opinion Writing On The United States Courts Of Appeals

“…For example, where the appellate court reverses the district court, room for disagreement exists among members of the appellate panel as well as between the appeals and district courts. Additionally, when appellants represent themselves pro se, legal arguments are likely to be less well developed and the cases are more likely to constitute "easy appeals" because lawyers are not present to screen cases that are likely to lose on appeal (Haire, Lindquist, & Hartley, 1999). Similarly, where counsel is appointed, the case may present less compelling legal arguments because the case has not been vetted by private counsel who often act as gatekeepers in the legal process (Kritzer, 1997).…”

Arguing with otherness: intertextual construction of the attorney stance in the Chinese courtroom

“…The discourse-analytic approach in this paper also provides useful evidence in support of Haire, Lindquist, and Hartley's (1999) idea that the quality of attorney advocacy has the potential to affect litigant success.…”

Lawyer rankings either do not matter for litigation outcomes or are redundant

“…What these findings do mean is that we should avoid using lawyer rankings as any indication of quality (though they may still serve as indicators of specialization: Haire et al (1999)), and that we should be generally skeptical of any claim made on behalf of producers of lawyer rankings that these rankings can aid consumers as guides to quality, since quality in this sense does not seem to be connected to outcomes.…”

“…I collected information on 116 coefficients from 11 different studies (Farole Jr, 1999;Haire et al, 1999;Hanretty, 2013;Haynie, 1994;McGuire, 1995McGuire, , 1998Sheehan et al, 1992;Songer and Sheehan, 1992;Songer et al, 1999Songer et al, , 2000Szmer et al, 2007). The required magnitude on the rank-based measure was greater than 82.8% of coefficients in the cited studies, and greater than greater than 91.4% of coefficients on the list-based measure.…”