Indigent Defense Counsel, Attorney Quality, and Defendant Outcomes

Michael A. Roach

American Law and Economics Review, 2014, vol. 16, issue 2, 577-619

Abstract: County governments typically provide legal defense services for the indigent through one of two methods: public defenders and assigned counsel. I measure differences in defendant outcomes between these two types of counsel, finding that assigned counsel generate significantly less favorable outcomes for defendants than public defenders. Since assigned counsel work involves attorneys selecting into it, outside labor market options could affect attorney selection decisions. With that in mind, I analyze how attorneys of different quality levels respond to exogenous changes in their respective outside options, finding a significant impact on the performance of assigned counsel relative to public defenders.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahu003 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:16:y:2014:i:2:p:577-619.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

American Law and Economics Review is currently edited by J.J. Prescott and Albert Choi

More articles in American Law and Economics Review from American Law and Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().