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Prior Research on Attorney-Litigant Decision Making

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Beyond Right and Wrong

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Abstract

Although the legal services industry assumes a large role in the American economy, scant data exists regarding the economic benefits of legal services expenditures, the accuracy of attorneys’ advice and the effectiveness of their representation in lawsuits. The legal industry has lagged behind other businesses and professions in establishing metrics to measure costs and assess performance. This chapter summarizes 40 years of research regarding attorney-litigant decision making and explains how judges, juries, attorneys and clients differ in their assessments of liability and damages and their predictions about trial outcomes.

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Notes

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  26. 26.

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  27. 27.

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  28. 28.

    Vidmar and Hans supra note 25 at 150. See Wissler, Roselle L., Hart, Allen J., and Saks, Michael J. (1999). Decision making about general damages: a comparison of jurors, judges and lawyers. Michigan Law Review, 98, 751. Heuer, Larry, and Penrod, Steven. (1994, February). Trial complexity: A field investigation of its meaning and its effects. Law and Human Behavior, 18(1), 29–52 (evidence complexity, legal complexity, and quantity of information were not significantly related to judge-jury verdict agreement). Robbennolt, Jennifer K. (2005). Evaluating juries by comparison to judges: A benchmark for judging. Florida State University Law Review, 32, 469, 477.

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  30. 30.

    Eisenberg, Theodore. (2006, July). Juries, judges and punitive damages: Empirical analysis using the civil justice survey of state courts 1992, 1996, and 2001 data. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 3(3), 293. Cf. Hersch, Joni, and Viscusi, W. Kip. (2004). Punitive damages: How judges and juries perform. Journal of Legal Studies, 33(1), 1–36.

  31. 31.

    Eisenberg supra note 30 at 293.

  32. 32.

    Vidmar and Hans supra note 25 at 311.

  33. 33.

    Galanter, Marc. The regulatory function of the civil jury. In Litan, Robert E., Ed. (1993). Verdict: Assessing the civil jury system, p. 83. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

  34. 34.

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  35. 35.

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  36. 36.

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  37. 37.

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  38. 38.

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  39. 39.

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  40. 40.

    Id. at 441.

  41. 41.

    Id. at 450.

  42. 42.

    Goodman-Delahunty, J., Granhag, P.A. & Loftus, E.F. (1998). How well can lawyers predict their chances of success? Unpublished manuscript. University of Washington. Cited in Koehler, Derek J., Brenner, Lyle, & Griffin, Dale. (2002). The calibration of expert judgment: Heuristics and biases beyond the laboratory. In Gilovich, Thomas, Griffin, Dale, & Kahneman, Daniel (Eds.). (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 705, 706). Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.

  43. 43.

    Id.

  44. 44.

    Vidmar and Hans supra note 25 at 301.

  45. 45.

    Wissler, Roselle L., Hart, Allen J., and Saks, Michael J. (1999). Decisionmaking about general damages: A comparison of jurors, judges and lawyers. Michigan Law Review, 98, 751, 812.

  46. 46.

    Id. at 805.

  47. 47.

    Id. at 758, 794.

  48. 48.

    Id. at 753.

  49. 49.

    Galanter supra note 33 at 83.

  50. 50.

    Gross, Samuel, & Syverud, Kent. (1991). Getting to no: A study of settlement negotiations and the selection of cases for trial. Michigan Law Review, 90, 319. Gross, Samuel, & Syverud, Kent. (1996). Don’t try: Civil jury verdicts in a system geared to settlement. UCLA Law Review, 44, 1, 51. Rachlinski, Jeffrey. (1996). Gains, losses and the psychology of litigation. Southern California Law Review, 70, 113.

  51. 51.

    Gross & Syverud (1991), supra note 50 at 330, 379.

  52. 52.

    Gross & Syverud (1991), supra note 50 at 379.

  53. 53.

    Priest, George L. & Klein, Benjamin. (1984). The selection of disputes for litigation. Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 13:1. Priest, George L. (1985). Reexamining the Selection Hypothesis. Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 14:215.

  54. 54.

    Gross & Syverud (1991) supra note 50 at 385.

  55. 55.

    Gross & Syverud (1991) supra note 50 at 381.

  56. 56.

    Rachlinski supra note 50 at 114, 118, 120, 142.

  57. 57.

    Rachlinski supra note 50 at 119.

  58. 58.

    Rachlinski supra note 50 at 160.

  59. 59.

    Some sentences in this chapter are excerpted with permission from the author’s article, “Let’s not make a deal: An empirical study of decision making in unsuccessful settlement negotiations” (co-authored with Martin Asher and Blakeley McShane), Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 5(3), 551–591, published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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    Randall Kiser

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Kiser, R. (2010). Prior Research on Attorney-Litigant Decision Making. In: Beyond Right and Wrong. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03814-3_2

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