Working Paper: NBER ID: w24579
Authors: Amanda Agan; Matthew Freedman; Emily Owens
Abstract: Governments in the U.S. must offer free legal services to low-income people accused of crimes. These services are frequently provided by assigned counsel, who handle cases for indigent defendants on a contract basis. Court-assigned attorneys generally garner worse case outcomes than privately retained attorneys. Using detailed court records from one large jurisdiction in Texas, we find that the disparities in outcomes are primarily attributable to case characteristics and within-attorney differences across cases in which they are assigned versus retained. The selection of low-quality lawyers into assigned counsel and endogenous matching in the private market contribute less to the disparities.
Keywords: indigent defense; criminal justice; public counsel; assigned counsel; legal representation
JEL Codes: H44; H76; J15; J38; K14
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| assigned counsel (K19) | conviction rate (K14) |
| assigned counsel (K19) | expected sentence length (Y60) |
| case characteristics (C10) | disparity in case outcomes (K41) |
| adverse selection (D82) | disparity in case outcomes (K41) |
| assigned counsel system (K40) | case outcomes (K40) |
| attorney effort (K41) | case resolution speed (C69) |
| assigned cases (I11) | time spent by attorneys (K41) |