Disclosure and Legal Advice

Abstract

This paper examines how the advice that lawyers provide to their clients affects the disclosure of evidence and the outcome of adjudication, and how the adjudicator should allocate the burden of proof in light of these effects. Despite lawyers' expertise in assessing the evidence, their advice is found to have no effect on adjudication if the lawyers follow the strategies of disclosing all favorable evidence. A lawyer's advice can influence the outcome in his client's favor, either if (s)he can credibly advise his client to suppress some favorable evidence or if legal advice is costly. The effect is socially undesirable in the former case, but it is desirable in the latter case. Our results provide a general perspective for understanding the role of private information and expert advice in disclosure. (JEL C72, D71, D72, D82)

When Is a Contrarian Adviser Optimal?

“…27 For example, Che and Severinov (2017) use an evidence-disclosure model of this kind to study the effect of legal advice about a client's disclosure decision.…”

Statistical evidence and the problem of robust litigation

“…Milgrom () and Shin () are examples. Che and Severinov () focus on the role for attorneys to suppress evidence in a model in which litigants probabilistically possess evidence and an additional judgment‐relevant piece of information is observed by attorneys and the court. Both of these are from a continuum and satisfy a monotone likelihood ratio property.…”