Legal Advice and Evidence with Bayesian and non-Bayesian Adjudicators

Yeon-Koo Che and Sergei Severinov

Microeconomics.ca working papers from Vancouver School of Economics

Abstract: We examine the effect of legal advice on the evidence that reaches the court and thernoutcome of adjudication, and highlight how the adjudicator should allocate thernburden of proof in light of these effects. rnDespite lawyers'rnexpertise in assessing the evidence, their advice is found to havernno effect on adjudication if the lawyers follow the strategies of disclosingrnall favorable evidence, irrespective of whether the adjudicator is Bayesian or rnnon-Bayesian. A lawyer's advice can influence the outcome to his client's favor,rneither if (s)he can credibly advise his client to suppress some favorable rnevidence or if legal advice is costly. The effect is socially undesirable in the rnformer case, but it is desirable in the latter case. rnWe also show that social welfare may be increased by regulating the inferencesrnthat adjudicators are allowed to make. Our results provide a general perspective rnfor understanding the role of private information and expert advice in disclosure.

Keywords: Legal advice; disclosure of evidence; adjudication of disputes; regulating adjudicators' inferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-12-31, Revised 2015-12-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-mic
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