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Do Lawyers Really Believe Their Own Hype, and Should They? A Natural Experiment

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  • Zev J. Eigen
  • Yair Listokin

Abstract

Research suggests that attorneys are too confident in the merits of their clients' cases. But attorneys often self-select (1) the area of law in which they practice, (2) the side on which to practice within that area, (3) law firms with whom they practice, and (4) the clients they represent. We exploit a natural experiment involving participants in moot court competitions at four U.S. law schools over 2 years to explore whether, after stripping away these selection biases through random assignment to the role of petitioner or respondent, legal advocates are still overconfident in their clients' claims. We find that, following participation in moot court contests, students overwhelmingly perceive that the legal merits favor the side that they were randomly assigned to represent. We also find that overconfidence is associated with poorer performance in advocacy as measured by legal writing instructors.

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  • Zev J. Eigen & Yair Listokin, 2012. "Do Lawyers Really Believe Their Own Hype, and Should They? A Natural Experiment," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 239-267.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/667711
    DOI: 10.1086/667711
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    1. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
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    4. Loewenstein, George & Issacharoff, Samuel & Camerer, Colin & Babcock, Linda, 1993. "Self-Serving Assessments of Fairness and Pretrial Bargaining," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 135-159, January.
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    1. Doron Teichman & Eyal Zamir & Ilana Ritov, 2023. "Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 852-894, December.
    2. Christoph Engel, 2022. "Judicial Decision-Making. A Survey of the Experimental Evidence," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2022_06, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    3. Mehmood, Sultan & Naseer, Shaheen & Chen, Daniel L., 2024. "Altruism in governance: Insights from randomized training for Pakistan's junior ministers," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    4. Fernandez, Marcelo Ariel & Mayskaya, Tatiana & Nikandrova, Arina, 2024. "Imposing commitment to rein in overconfidence in learning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 29-48.
    5. Friehe, Tim & Pham, Cat Lam & Xemaire, Simon, 2024. "On the strategic choice of overconfident lawyers," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Claudia M. Landeo, 2018. "Law and economics and tort litigation institutions: theory and experiments," Chapters, in: Joshua C. Teitelbaum & Kathryn Zeiler (ed.), Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, chapter 9, pages 247-268, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Earnhart, Dietrich & Rousseau, Sandra, 2019. "Are lawyers worth the cost? Legal counsel in environmental criminal court cases," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    8. Holger Spamann, 2016. "Can Simple Mechanism Design Results be Used to Implement the Proportionality Standard in Discovery?," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(1), pages 227-231, March.

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