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Title: Counsel Quality and Client Match Effects in Indigent Defense

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: Local governments in the United States are required to offer free legal services to low-income people accused of crimes. Indigent defendants represented by private attorneys working as assigned counsel fare worse than defendants represented by public defenders or retained attorneys, but the reasons for the observed differences in case outcomes are not well understood. We shed new light on the causes of these disparities by taking advantage of detailed court records from one large jurisdiction in Texas that allow us to track lawyers across different cases. In contrast to the existing literature, we find that the majority of the disparity in outcomes is due to within-attorney differences across cases in which they are assigned and retained; the selection of low-quality attorneys into assigned counsel can explain at most 25% of the gap in outcomes for low-income defendants. A fee structure for assigned counsel that incentivizes obtaining quick pleas from clients likely contributes to moral hazard. We also present evidence that endogenous matching of defendants and attorneys plays some role in determining case outcomes, although defendants' revealed preference for male attorneys with offices close to their places of residence tends to work against them in court.

Url: https://www.sole-jole.org/17250.pdf

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Authors: Agan, Amanda; Freedman, Matthew; Owens, Emily

Publisher: Rutgers University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

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