IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/acb/cbeeco/2021-678.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Of hired guns and ideologues: why would a law firm ever retain an honest expert witness?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Richardson

Abstract

We suppose that expert witnesses are, generically, either honest in their assessment of a fact situation or are mercenary ‘hired guns’ that advocate for their retaining party. The type of a witness is known to law firms, who engage with them repeatedly, but not to courts. If the only way an honest witness can credibly reveal their type to a court is by siding with the opposing party then the question arises of why a law firm would ever retain an honest expert. We show that it can act as a signaling device in a game between the law firms to communicate private information regarding a party’s confidence in winning the case. Our results indicate, amongst other things, that the ‘English’ rule of costs allocation can make a socially desirable separating equilibrium less likely, compared to the ‘American’ rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Richardson, 2021. "Of hired guns and ideologues: why would a law firm ever retain an honest expert witness?," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2021-678, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2021-678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/econ/wp678.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yeon-Koo Che & Sergei Severinov, 2017. "Disclosure and Legal Advice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 188-225, May.
    2. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Deb, Joyee, 2014. "What is a good reputation? Career concerns with heterogeneous audiences," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 44-50.
    3. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2018. "On the value of persuasion by experts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 103-123.
    4. Piotr Dworczak & Alessandro Pavan, 2022. "Preparing for the Worst but Hoping for the Best: Robust (Bayesian) Persuasion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(5), pages 2017-2051, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonas Hedlund & T. Florian Kauffeldt & Malte Lammert, 2021. "Persuasion under ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 455-482, May.
    2. Yasui, Yuta, 2021. "Controlling Fake Reviews," MPRA Paper 108177, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2015. "Competition and uncertainty in a paper’s news desk," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 116(1), pages 77-93, September.
    4. Tommaso Denti & Doron Ravid, 2023. "Robust Predictions in Games with Rational Inattention," Papers 2306.09964, arXiv.org.
    5. Alexei Parakhonyak & Anton Sobolev, 2022. "Persuasion without Priors," Economics Series Working Papers 977, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Evans, R. & Reiche, S., 2022. "When is a Contrarian Adviser Optimal?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2222, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Jesse Bull & Joel Watson, 2019. "Statistical evidence and the problem of robust litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(4), pages 974-1003, December.
    8. Keegan Harris & Nicole Immorlica & Brendan Lucier & Aleksandrs Slivkins, 2023. "Algorithmic Persuasion Through Simulation," Papers 2311.18138, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    9. Chan, Jimmy & Gupta, Seher & Li, Fei & Wang, Yun, 2019. "Pivotal persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 178-202.
      • Jimmy Chan & Seher Gupta & Fei Li & Yun Wang, 2018. "Pivotal Persuasion," Working Papers 2018-11-03, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    10. Heski Bar-Isaac Jr. & Joyee Deb Jr., 2014. "(Good and Bad) Reputation for a Servant of Two Masters," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 293-325, November.
    11. Yanlin Chen & Jun Zhang, 2019. "Signaling by Bayesian Persuasion and Pricing Strategy. Short title: Disclosure and Price Signaling," Working Paper Series 2019/14, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    12. Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler, 2021. "Persuasion with Ambiguous Receiver Preferences," Papers 2109.11536, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    13. Dirk Bergemann & Tan Gan & Yingkai Li, 2023. "Managing Persuasion Robustly: The Optimality of Quota Rules," Papers 2310.10024, arXiv.org.
    14. Malamud, Semyon & Cieslak, Anna & Schrimpf, Paul, 2021. "Optimal Transport of Information," CEPR Discussion Papers 15859, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias, 2017. "Advertising as signal jamming," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 91-113.
    16. Tao Lin & Ce Li, 2024. "Information Design with Unknown Prior," Papers 2410.05533, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2025.
    17. Semyon Malamud & Andreas Schrimpf, 2021. "Persuasion by Dimension Reduction," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 21-69, Swiss Finance Institute.
    18. Alonso, Ricardo & Zachariadis, Konstantinos E., 2024. "Persuading large investors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    19. Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler, 2024. "Persuasion with ambiguous receiver preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 77(4), pages 1173-1218, June.
    20. Hedlund, Jonas, 2014. "Bayesian signaling," Working Papers 0577, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    expert witnesses; signaling; litigation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2021-678. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.