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Predictive Analytics
Are Lawyers Citing the Best Cases to Courts?
June 17, 2019
Here is a question I've never thought about before: Are lawyers citing the best cases to courts? In other words, do the courts use the cases cited in the briefs, and how often do the courts use cases not mentioned in any brief? The answer may surprise you! Kevin Bennardo & Alexa Chew (UNC), Citation Stickiness. "This Article is an empirical study of what we call citation stickiness. A citation is sticky if it appears in one of the parties’ briefs and then again in the court’s...
June 17, 2019
Here is a question I've never thought about before: Are lawyers citing the best cases to courts? In other words, do the courts use the cases cited in the briefs, and how often do the courts use cases not mentioned in any brief? The answer may surprise you! Kevin Bennardo & Alexa Chew (UNC), Citation Stickiness. "This Article is an empirical study of what we call citation stickiness. A citation is sticky if it appears in one of the parties’ briefs and then again in the court’s...
Incentives, Performance and Choking in Darts
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
Settlement Malpractice
June 11, 2019
Lawyers routinely settle lawsuits or advise their clients about settlement. One might expect, therefore, that clients routinely complain about some aspect of their lawyers’ settlement services. Ten years of data from eleven jurisdictions paint a vivid, different picture: although the vast majority of civil lawsuits are resolved through negotiated settlements and although complaints against lawyers are common, fewer than 1% of reported legal malpractice cases and only about 1.5% of Bar complaints...
June 11, 2019
Lawyers routinely settle lawsuits or advise their clients about settlement. One might expect, therefore, that clients routinely complain about some aspect of their lawyers’ settlement services. Ten years of data from eleven jurisdictions paint a vivid, different picture: although the vast majority of civil lawsuits are resolved through negotiated settlements and although complaints against lawyers are common, fewer than 1% of reported legal malpractice cases and only about 1.5% of Bar complaints...
American Law Firms in Transition: Trends, Threats and Strategies
June 10, 2019
American Law Firms: Trends, Threats and Strategies takes a sweeping, incisive view of law firms' uneven progress after the Great Recession and analyzes the five elements that will determine their success or failure in the next decade: culture, character, practices, systems and leaders. Studying every critical aspect of law firms from income trends to attorney attrition rates and from gender bias to leadership development, this book shows how law firms have struggled to adapt to rapidly changing...
June 10, 2019
American Law Firms: Trends, Threats and Strategies takes a sweeping, incisive view of law firms' uneven progress after the Great Recession and analyzes the five elements that will determine their success or failure in the next decade: culture, character, practices, systems and leaders. Studying every critical aspect of law firms from income trends to attorney attrition rates and from gender bias to leadership development, this book shows how law firms have struggled to adapt to rapidly changing...
Risk & Rigor: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decision Trees for Assessing Cases and Advising Clients
June 7, 2019
Risk and Rigor offers practical guidance to lawyers, mediators, and clients on using decision trees to more rigorously think...
June 7, 2019
Risk and Rigor offers practical guidance to lawyers, mediators, and clients on using decision trees to more rigorously think...
The Effects of the Extant Clauses Limiting Auditor Liability on Audit Fees and Overall Reporting Quality
June 6, 2019
Regulators and shareholders generally oppose any restriction on clients' rights to sue their auditors, believing that such restrictions would impair reporting quality. However, the evidence suggests that the opposition to limitation of liability agreements (LLAs) between clients and auditors is likely unwarranted. Specifically, the evidence indicates that LLAs are beneficial to clients by lowering their audit fees. More importantly, we find no evidence that they impair financial reporting quality...
June 6, 2019
Regulators and shareholders generally oppose any restriction on clients' rights to sue their auditors, believing that such restrictions would impair reporting quality. However, the evidence suggests that the opposition to limitation of liability agreements (LLAs) between clients and auditors is likely unwarranted. Specifically, the evidence indicates that LLAs are beneficial to clients by lowering their audit fees. More importantly, we find no evidence that they impair financial reporting quality...
Sorry, Laws Protecting Doctors Who Apologize Don’t Lessen Litigation
June 5, 2019
Laws intended to reduce malpractice litigation by protecting doctors who want to apologize don’t work, according to a new Vanderbilt analysis of proprietary insurance data. It turns out people sue for money and an apology doesn’t change that reality. In fact, apologies may raise the risk of claims. “The idea is simply that if providers could just say they’re sorry, that’s what patients really want. They really don’t care about punishing the doctor in a financial context, they care...
June 5, 2019
Laws intended to reduce malpractice litigation by protecting doctors who want to apologize don’t work, according to a new Vanderbilt analysis of proprietary insurance data. It turns out people sue for money and an apology doesn’t change that reality. In fact, apologies may raise the risk of claims. “The idea is simply that if providers could just say they’re sorry, that’s what patients really want. They really don’t care about punishing the doctor in a financial context, they care...
FutureLaw 2019: Rearranging the Bits of the LegalTech Revolution
June 1, 2019
The annual FutureLaw conference — produced by CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, with the sponsorship...
June 1, 2019
The annual FutureLaw conference — produced by CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, with the sponsorship...
It’s Not Just About the Money and Other Food for Thought for Mediators
May 29, 2019
Get under the surface. In a long-running claim worth many tens of millions, the decision-makers appeared to have reached the end of the road. In an effort to find a way forward, we spent four hours going through my ‘Questions for a Difficult Meeting’ questionnaire. The parties prepared privately first and then, meeting together, they alternated in giving their responses. The nature of the questions is such that they needed to dig deeper to look for answers. This opened up new levels of understanding...
May 29, 2019
Get under the surface. In a long-running claim worth many tens of millions, the decision-makers appeared to have reached the end of the road. In an effort to find a way forward, we spent four hours going through my ‘Questions for a Difficult Meeting’ questionnaire. The parties prepared privately first and then, meeting together, they alternated in giving their responses. The nature of the questions is such that they needed to dig deeper to look for answers. This opened up new levels of understanding...
Towards a Better Understanding of Lawyers’ Judgmental Biases in Client Representation
May 28, 2019
Previous research demonstrates that lawyers and law students are, on average, prone to overconfidence bias and self-serving judgments of fairness when they take on a representative lawyering role. This is the first study to investigate individual differences in susceptibility to these biases. Expanding on two previous experiments (Loewenstein, et al., 1993; Babcock, Loewenstein & Issacharoff, 1998), and utilizing as our sample 468 law students from twelve geographically diverse U.S. law schools,...
May 28, 2019
Previous research demonstrates that lawyers and law students are, on average, prone to overconfidence bias and self-serving judgments of fairness when they take on a representative lawyering role. This is the first study to investigate individual differences in susceptibility to these biases. Expanding on two previous experiments (Loewenstein, et al., 1993; Babcock, Loewenstein & Issacharoff, 1998), and utilizing as our sample 468 law students from twelve geographically diverse U.S. law schools,...
