Two new studies on sentencing disparity and attorney performance
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Stumbled across two new interesting studies last night, both by David Abrams of the Univ. of Chicago Law School. The first one, entitled “Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment of Race” tries to take on the burning question of racial disparity in sentencing from a different angle.
Does the legal system discriminate against minorities? Systematic racial differences in case characteristics, many unobservable, make this a difficult question to answer directly. In this paper, we estimate whether judges systematically differ in how they sentence minorities, avoiding potential bias from unobservables by exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges. We measure the between-judge variation in the difference in incarceration rates and sentence lengths between African-American and White defendants…In our data set, which includes felony cases from Cook County, Illinois, we find statistically significant between-judge variation in incarceration rates, although not in sentence lengths.
The second, entitled The Luck of the Draw: Using Random Case Assignment to Investigate Attorney Ability, seeks to measure attorney ability (duh).
We find substantial heterogeneity in attorney performance that cannot be explained simply by differences in case characteristics, and this heterogeneity correlates with attorneys’ individual observable characteristics. Attorneys with longer tenure in the office achieve better outcomes for the client. We find that a veteran public defender with ten years of experience reduces the average length of incarceration by 17 percent relative to a public defender in her first year.
We also examine the correlation between attorney characteristics and case outcomes. Experienced attorneys achieve substantially more favorable outcomes for their clients (defendants) than less experienced attorneys. Defendants represented by more experienced attorneys are more likely to avoid a prison or jail sentence, and those who do receive a sentence serve shorter terms on average. We do not, however, find any statistically significant differences in sentencing based on the attorney’s legal educational background.
Attorneys who attended higher-tier law schools (based on 2005 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings) do not obtain better sentence outcomes for their clients than their peers who attended lower-tier schools. Lastly, and somewhat surprisingly, we find racial disparities in attorney performance: attorneys of Hispanic origin achieve lower average incarceration than all other racial attorney groups.
Well, there you have it. Going to a top tier school has no bearing on your likelihood of success in the public interest field and in criminal defense. This is not surprising to me at all. The closer you are to the top of the tier, the more the focus is on securing lucrative jobs at big firms, which involve writing briefs and - if someone can please, please, explain to me what this means - document review. The towards-the-middle-and-bottom-of-the-tier schools seem to provide a healthy mix of the academia and the practical. That is what prepares you to practice successfully in this field. Not only knowing how to write that darn appellate brief, but also knowing how to try that case first.
HT: Andrew Leigh
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Just wanted to point out that the second study really only suggests if you’re a good enough trial lawyer to handle felonies in the Vegas PDs office, you’re pretty much as good as your peers. Except the experienced PDs have more experience (and thus get better results) than their less experienced fellows.
Duh.
It’s really not a great study - it seems like sort of a straw-man argument and screams small sample size.
For example, it’s no surprise to me that someone who has 10 years of experience with the law, courts, judges, and has gone to trial often will secure a better result than someone with 6 months of experience. If the study really wanted to see if LS affected sentencing outcomes, you’d think they’d be comparing attorneys of similar courtroom experience and different educational backgrounds.
There’s also the question of just how much LS affects a PDs performance a few years down the line. As the study admits, we don’t know much about the backgrounds of the different PDs - just the bare rank of their law school. No mention of if they did a clinic, if they took a “big law” curriculum, or how much training they received at the PDs office post-law school (nor for that matter how much other legal experience they may have had before being hired by the PDs office.)
We also don’t know how many people leave the PDs office prior to handling felonies, nor what their background is.
Lastly (and this is the real killer for me) - not all felony cases are created equal. I’m sure the felony attorneys don’t take 100 cases to trial each year. If they plead out 50 very weak cases to good sentences, then that’s going to flatten the data on the outcome of those cases that actually go to trial - and I’d submit that’s where attorney skill might actually have a great impact. We’d probably also want to exclude flawed cases brought to trial for political reasons by the state attorney’s office - cases doomed to be nolle prossed are just not reflective of the defense attorney’s abilities.
It’s an interesting issue, but they didn’t really ask the right questions to address it.
**
Anecdotally, I will say that I don’t notice any real difference in outcomes between T1, T2 T3 and T4 LS grads here in Miami, although I’m not in the felony courtrooms all that much. (In fact, I often forget where people went to law school - it just does not interest me as much as whatever they have to say about legal issue X *at that moment*.)
Doc Review is reading large amounts discovery. I have been involved in civil cases with ROOMS full of disclosed document. Someone has to read them, code them (that is put in pre-formatted shorthand what the doc means), and hot doc them (think look for smoking guns). You generally need someone with some degree of legal experience and/or training (senior paralegal or junior attorney) to do it.
Scoplaw, I quite agree with you, but as Scott often points out, our viewpoint is different from that of the non-pd lawyer. After all, the study was conducted by a U of Chicago professor and as seen by my follow up post, not everyone has the same reaction.
We see no difference because we’re in the trenches and we know what it takes to be successful. The vast majority don’t.