Lawyer Involvement Research Articles

Mediation, Lawyers and Special Educational Needs: Ensuring a Balanced Approach to Dispute Resolution

Mediation is intended to provide a less formal and more collaborative forum for dispute resolution than a court or tribunal and one in which the parties themselves can actively participate in reaching a settlement. There is an assumption that, guided by a skilled mediator, they can do so without lawyer assistance. Indeed, the presence of lawyers tends to be discouraged, deemed not conducive to the informality and the non-adversarial character of mediation. Yet in a mediation there is often an imbalance of power and inequality of arms and fundamental rights can be at issue. One such area is special educational needs (SEN), applicable to nearly 1.5 million children in England, a field where disputes between families and local authorities are common. This article examines the case for and against lawyer involvement in mediations of this kind and considers what might be the most appropriate model of such involvement.

Great expectations? Comparing litigants' attitudes before and after using legal procedures.

To examine whether litigants' initial attraction to legal procedures (e.g., mediation, hearings, jury trials) predicted their postexperience evaluations of the procedures and whether attendance moderated this relationship. Litigants' initial attraction to the legal procedure that later resolved their case would better predict postexperience satisfaction and fairness for litigants who adjudicated versus settled. I also explored whether the predicted relationship would vary as a function of litigants' attending the procedure and when case duration, lawyer involvement, and litigants' repeat player status were included in the models. Four hundred-twelve state court litigants rated their attraction to different legal procedures at the start of their cases and 335 (81.3% retention) rated their satisfaction with, and fairness of, the procedure that ultimately resolved their case. Initial attraction to and ex post evaluations of legal procedures were more strongly related among litigants who adjudicated versus settled, but this association did not hold when the covariates were included. Instead, lawyer involvement and shorter duration were associated with increased ex post satisfaction and fairness. For litigants who personally attended their procedure, initial attraction was unrelated to later evaluations of fairness and those who settled evaluated their procedure as fairer compared to those who adjudicated. By contrast, for litigants who did not attend, initial attraction was positively related to later fairness evaluations and there was no fairness difference between settlement and adjudication. The same attendance patterns emerged irrespective of whether the covariates were included. Lawyer involvement and shorter case duration better predicted litigants' evaluations of legal procedures than their initial attraction to procedures. Attendance was associated with increased fairness evaluations for settlement relative to adjudication and initial attraction was positively related to fairness only when litigants did not attend their procedure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Trends in lawyer use in road traffic injury compensation claims.

Injury compensation claimants use legal services to help them navigate compensation schemes, including accessing benefits and resolving disputes. Little is known, however, about the extent of lawyer use by compensation claimants, including changes over time. This paper presents findings from one of the largest empirical investigations of lawyer use in an injury compensation setting to date. Using evidence from more than 275,000 claims in the road traffic injury scheme in the state of Victoria, Australia, this study examines the prevalence of, and changes in, lawyer use between 2000 and 2015. The analysis identifies a significant increase in the use of lawyers in the scheme, and explores possible explanations. This study provides critical insights into lawyer use in compensation settings: the steep increase in lawyer involvement has both access to justice and financial implications for compensation schemes, given the associations between lawyer use, claimant outcomes, and long-term scheme viability.

ДЕЯКІ АСПЕКТИ УЧАСТІ АДВОКАТА В НОТАРІАЛЬНОМУ ПРОЦЕСІ

The article examines the role and functional importance of the lawyer's involvement in the notarial process, discusses the peculiarities of the lawyer's procedural activity in committing certain groups of notarial proceedings. Based on the analysis of judicial and notarial practice, the authors consider the issues of registration of the powers of the lawyer who provides representation in the notarial process. The article concludes that it is necessary to eliminate ambiguous understanding of documentary confirmation of the representative's powers. The specifics of participation in the notarial process and the peculiarities of legal regulation for such participation are determined by the nature of procedural formalities in the sphere of the notarial process. The necessity of determining the lawyer's powers in the notarial process on the basis of a power of attorney issubstantiated. The specifics of the lawyer's activity in the notarial process are proposed to be determined on the basis of two significant aspects: the legal status of the person represented by the lawyer and the nature, complexity, subjectivity of the notarial proceedings. Since the notarial procedure involves the search for the most favorable, acceptable to the parties options for solving their legal situation, the use of various instruments of legal technique, the negative effects of the lawyer's participation in the dynamics of notarial proceedings areanalyzed. Particular attention is paid to the functional component of the lawyer's participation in the notarial proceedings in terms of the stage of the notarial process. Based on the analysis of the case law and the practice of notary decrees on the refusal to perform a notarial act, it is concluded that most of the refusals were made on the grounds that could be eliminated or corrected by the applicant. The paper also stipulates the expediency of the lawyer's involvement in the notarial process for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of such a process. The efficiency of the lawyer's participation in the stage of preparation for the execution of the notary proceedings is determined in order to ensure the legal analysis of the documents as should be provided by the applicant for confirmation of one or another legal fact; legal analysis of the grounds for refusal of a notary in committing notarial proceedings; ways of adjusting the course of the notarial process, offering alternatives to solving the legal situation of theperson. The article highlights the problematic aspects of the personal participation of a person on behalf of and in the name of whom the notarial proceedings are committed. Cases where such participation is mandatory are demonstrated. Based on the research, the authors of the article offer independent conclusions and judgments on the analyzed topics.

A systematic review of the association between fault or blame-related attributions and procedures after transport injury and health and work-related outcomes

Attributions of fault are often associated with worse injury outcomes; however, the consistency and magnitude of these impacts is not known. This review examined the prognostic role of fault on health, mental health, pain and work outcomes after transport injury. A systematic search of five electronic databases (Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library) yielded 16,324 records published between 2000 and January 2018. Eligibility criteria were: adult transport injury survivors; prospective design; multivariable analysis; fault-related factor analysed; pain, mental health, general health or work-related outcome. Citations (n = 10,558, excluding duplicates) and full text articles (n = 555) were screened manually (Reviewer 1), and using concurrent machine learning and text mining (Reviewer 2; using Abstrackr, WordStat and QDA miner). Data from 55 papers that met all inclusion criteria were extracted, papers were evaluated for risk of bias using the QUIPS tool, and overall level of evidence was assessed using the GRADE tool. There were six main fault-related factors classified as: fault or responsibility, fault-based compensation, lawyer involvement or litigation, blame or guilt, road user or position in vehicle, and impact direction. Overall there were inconsistent associations between fault and transport injury outcomes, and 60% of papers had high risk of bias. There was moderate evidence that fault-based compensation claims were associated with poorer health-related outcomes, and that lawyer involvement was associated with poorer work outcomes beyond 12 months post-injury. However, the evidence of negative associations between fault-based compensation claims and work-related outcomes was limited. Lawyer involvement and fault-based compensation claims were associated with adverse mental health outcomes six months post-injury, but not beyond 12 months. The most consistent associations between fault and negative outcomes were not for fault attributions, per se, but were related to fault-related procedures (e.g., lawyer engagement, fault-based compensation claims).

Expert Witness Reports in Federal Civil Litigation: The Role of the Attorney in the Expert Witness Report's Preparation

Every day across America civil litigators in federal court work closely with experts to create required expert reports and hone expert testimony. Yet they do so without clear guidance as to the limits, if any, on their assistance. Despite an attempt in 2010 to clarify the rules in this area with amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, that attempt has proven woefully inadequate. Today there is no consensus as to the line between proper assistance and lawyer overreaching. There are major areas of uncertainty over the means by which the degree of lawyer involvement can be discovered. While there is substantial agreement that lawyer assistance at times is so excessive that exclusion of the expert’s report is warranted, or at least that that involvement is relevant to the weight to be afforded the expert’s testimony, some courts so limit the inquiry into the lawyer’s role in assisting the expert that applying these safeguards is near impossible. In this article, I unpack the current doctrine laying bare the areas of disagreement. At a minimum, this arms litigants with competing arguments to assert when discovery disputes in this area arise. With the disagreements clearly identified, courts may yet come to a consensus on these issues, but the experience of the last eight years under the 2010 regime suggests that hope is a remote one. Assuming some courts will continue to frustrate attempts to uncover the extent of lawyer influence under the current rules, I propose a variety of alternatives that can check excessive lawyer involvement without creating the problems the 2010 amendments were intended to address.

(Where is) the Tipping Point for Governmental Regulation of Canadian Lawyers? Perhaps it is in Paradise: Critically Assessing Regulation of Lawyer Involvement with Money Laundering After Canada (Attorney General) v Federation of Law Societies of Canada

(Where is) the Tipping Point for Governmental Regulation of Canadian Lawyers? Perhaps it is in Paradise: Critically Assessing Regulation of Lawyer Involvement with Money Laundering After Canada (Attorney General) v Federation of Law Societies of Canada

Traumatic injury and perceived injustice: Fault attributions matter in a "no-fault" compensation state.

BackgroundTraumatic injury can lead to loss, suffering and feelings of injustice. Previous research has shown that perceived injustice is associated with poorer physical and mental wellbeing in persons with chronic pain. This study aimed to identify the relative association between injury, compensation and pain-related characteristics and perceived injustice 12-months after traumatic injury.Methods433 participants were recruited from the Victorian Orthopedic Trauma Outcomes Registry and Victorian State Trauma Registry, and completed questionnaires at 12–14 months after injury as part of an observational cohort study. Using hierarchical linear regression we examined the relationships between baseline demographics (sex, age, education, comorbidities), injury (injury severity, hospital length of stay), compensation (compensation status, fault, lawyer involvement), and health outcomes (SF-12) and perceived injustice. We then examined how much additional variance in perceived injustice was related to worse pain severity, interference, self-efficacy, catastrophizing, kinesiophobia or disability.ResultsOnly a small portion of variance in perceived injustice was related to baseline demographics (especially education level), and injury severity. Attribution of fault to another, consulting a lawyer, health-related quality of life, disability and the severity of pain-related cognitions explained the majority of variance in perceived injustice. While univariate analyses showed that compensable injury led to higher perceptions of injustice, this did not remain significant when adjusting for all other factors, including fault attribution and consulting a lawyer.ConclusionsIn addition to the “justice” aspects of traumatic injury, the health impacts of injury, emotional distress related to pain (catastrophizing), and the perceived impact of pain on activity (pain self-efficacy), had stronger associations with perceptions of injustice than either injury or pain severity. To attenuate the likelihood of poor recovery from injury, clinical interventions that support restoration of health-related quality of life, and adjustment to the impacts of trauma are needed.

Outcomes and prognostic variables of radiofrequency zygapophyseal joint neurotomy in Utah workers' compensation patients.

PurposeThe prevalence of radiofrequency zygapophyseal joint neurotomy (RFN) has increased substantially across the past decade. Limited research exists that has examined pre-procedure predictors of RFN outcomes, particularly within workers’ compensation populations. The purpose of this study was to determine if pre-procedure biopsychosocial variables are predictive of outcomes in a cohort of compensated Utah patients who have undergone RFN.Patients and methodsThis was a retrospective cohort study consisting of a review of pre-procedure medical records and a telephone outcome survey. The sample consisted of 101 compensated workers from Utah who had undergone RFN. Fifty-six patients (55%) responded to the outcome survey. Patients were an average of 46 months post-neurotomy at the time of follow-up. Outcome measures included patient satisfaction, disability status, Roland–Morris Disability Questionnaire, Stauffer–Coventry Index, and Short-Form Health Survey-36 (v.2). Statistical techniques utilized included frequencies, mean comparisons, and logistic and multiple regressions.ResultsForty percent of patients were totally disabled at the time of follow-up. Lawyer involvement, older age, and a positive history of depression were predictors of poor outcomes in logistic and multiple regression equations.ConclusionPresurgical biopsychosocial variables were predictive of multidimensional patient outcomes, and a high rate of total disability was observed. Additional research on the effectiveness of RFN for workers’ compensation patients is recommended.

Predictors of time to claim closure following a non-catastrophic injury sustained in a motor vehicle crash: a prospective cohort study.

BackgroundResearch suggests that exposure to the compensation system (including time to case closure) could adversely influence a persons’ recovery following injury. However, the long-term predictors of time to claim closure following minor road traffic injuries remain unclear. We aimed to assess a wide spectrum of factors that could influence time to claim closure (socio-demographic, compensation-related, health, psychosocial and pre-injury factors) over 24 months following a non-catastrophic injury.MethodsProspective cohort study of 364 participants involved in a compensation scheme following a motor vehicle crash. We used a telephone-administered questionnaire to obtain information on potential explanatory variables. Information on time to claim closure was obtained from an insurance regulatory authority maintained database, and was classified as the duration between the crash date and claim settlement date, and categorized into < 12 (early), > 12–24 (medium) and > 24 months (late).ResultsJust over half of claimants (54 %) had settled their claim by 12 months, while 17 % and 30 % took > 12–24 months and > 24 months for claim closure, respectively. Whiplash at baseline was associated with claim closure time of > 12–24 months versus < 12 months: multivariable-adjusted OR 2.38 (95 % CI 1.06–5.39). Claimants who were overweight/obese versus normal/underweight at the time of injury were ~3.0-fold more likely to settle their claim at > 12–24 months than < 12 months. Consulting a lawyer was associated with a 10.4- and 21.0-fold increased likelihood of settling a claim at > 12–24 months and > 24 months, respectively. Each 1-unit increase in Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire scores at baseline was associated with greater odds of both medium (> 12–24 months) and delayed claim settlement date (> 24 months): multivariable-adjusted OR 1.04 (95 % CU 1.01–1.07) and 1.02 (95 % CI 1.00–1.05), respectively.ConclusionsAround a third of claimants with a minor injury had not settled by 24 months. Health-related factors and lawyer involvement independently influenced time to claim closure.

Associations with legal representation in a compensation setting 12 months after injury

ContextMany people with Whiplash Associated Disorder (WAD) seek treatment though a compensation system where factors such as legal involvement have been reported as having a negative impact on recovery outcomes. ObjectiveTo compare those with and without legal involvement in their compensation claim, and identify associations with legal involvement at 12 months post injury; and longer term disability. Study designInception cohort study. Participants246 people with WAD compensation claim. Outcome measuresLegal involvement and Functional Rating Index at 12 months post injury. MethodsParticipants were recruited from an insurance database. Baseline health (Functional Rating Index, Pain Catastrophising Scale and SF-36), socio-economic, work capacity, and claims data were collected within three months of injury and 12 months. Logistic regression models were used to identify associations with legal involvement at 12 months; and disability (FRI) at 12 months. ResultsAt baseline 246 participants were enrolled into the study in a median 72 days post injury. At 12 months post injury 52 (25%) had engaged a lawyer. The significant independent associations with legal involvement at 12 months were higher levels of initial disability, work disability, speaking a language other than English at home and lower levels of mental health. Specifically, the odds of lawyer involvement at 12 months post injury was 4.9 times greater for those with work disability; 2.3 times greater for those who spoke a language other than English at home. In terms of health, they had poorer mental health and for every 10 unit increase in the baseline FRI score the odds of having lawyer involvement increased by 38%. Disabilityat 12 months (FRI) was significantly independently associated with, PCS-helplessness (p<0.001), age (p<0.001) and prior claim (p=0.001). ConclusionThis study suggests the people with lawyer involvement in their claim 12 months after injury have socio-economic disadvantage, have had a prior claim and a worse baseline health profile compared to those without a lawyer.Understanding this profile could allow for improved claims processes and targeted interventions to assist this group through any perceived complexities in the system and address the underlying reasons for lawyer participation within compensation schemes.

Process-related factors associated with disciplinary board decisions

BackgroundIn most health care systems disciplinary boards have been organised in order to process patients’ complaints about health professionals. Although, the safe-guarding of the legal rights of the involved parties is a crucial concern, there is limited knowledge about what role the complaint process plays with regard to board decision outcomes. Using complaint cases towards general practitioners, the aim of this study was to identify what process factors are statistically associated with disciplinary actions as seen from the party of the complainant and the defendant general practitioner, respectively.MethodsDanish Patient Complaints Board decisions concerning general practitioners completed in 2007 were examined. Information on process factors was extracted from the case files and included complaint delay, complainant’s lawyer involvement, the number of general practitioners involved, event duration, expert witness involvement, case management duration and decision outcome (discipline or no discipline). Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed on compound case decisions eventually involving more general practitioners (as seen from the complainant’s side) and on separated decisions (as seen from the defendant general practitioner’s side).ResultsFrom the general practitioner’s side, when the number of general practitioners involved in a complaint case increased, odds of being disciplined significantly decreased (OR=0.661 per additional general practitioner involved, p<0.001). Contrarily, from the complainant’s side, no association could be detected between complaining against a plurality of general practitioners and the odds of at least one general practitioner being disciplined. From both sides, longer case management duration was associated with higher odds of discipline (OR=1.038 per additional month, p=0.010). No association could be demonstrated with regard to complaint delay, lawyer involvement, event duration, or expert witness involvement. There was lawyer involvement in 5% of cases and expert witness involvement in 92% of cases. The mean complaint delay was 3 months and 18 days and the mean case management duration was 14 months and 7 days.ConclusionsCertain complaint process factors might be statistically associated with decision outcomes. However, the impact diverges as seen from the different parties. Future studies are merited in order to uncover the judicial mechanisms lying behind.

Does injury compensation lead to worse health after whiplash? A systematic review

One might expect that injury compensation would leave injured parties better off than they would otherwise have been, yet many believe that compensation does more harm than good. This study systematically reviews the evidence on this “compensation hypothesis” in relation to compensable whiplash injuries. PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, PEDro, PsycInfo, CCTR, Lexis, and EconLit were searched from the date of their inception to April 2010 to locate longitudinal studies, published in English, comparing the health outcomes of adults exposed/not exposed to compensation-related factors. Studies concerning serious neck injuries, using claimants only, or using proxy measures of health outcomes were excluded. Eleven studies were included. These examined the effect of lawyer involvement, litigation, claim submission, or previous claims on pain and other health outcomes. Among the 16 results reported were 9 statistically significant negative associations between compensation-related factors and health outcomes. Irrespective of the compensation-related factor involved and the health outcome measured, the quality of these studies was similar to studies that did not find a significant negative association: most took some measures to address selection bias, confounding, and measurement bias, and none resolved the potential for reverse causality bias that arises in the relationship between compensation-related factors and health. Unless ambiguous causal pathways are addressed, one cannot draw conclusions from statistical associations, regardless of their statistical significance and the extent of measures to address other sources of bias. Consequently, there is no clear evidence to support the idea that compensation and its related processes lead to worse health.

Assessing Consumer Fraud Risk in Insurance Claims

We present an unsupervised learning method for classifying consumer insurance claims according to their suspiciousness of fraud versus nonfraud. The predictor variables contained within a claim file that are used in this analysis can be binary, ordinal categorical, or continuous variates. They are constructed such that the ordinal position of the response to the predictor variable bears a monotonic relationship with the fraud suspicion of the claim. Thus, although no individual variable is of itself assumed to be determinative of fraud, each of the individual variables gives a “hint” or indication as to the suspiciousness of fraud for the overall claim file. The presented method statistically concatenates the totality of these “hints” to make an overall assessment of the ranking of fraud risk for the claim files without using any a priori fraud-classified or -labeled subset of data. We first present a scoring method for the predictor variables that puts all the variables (whether binary “red flag indicators,” ordinal categorical variables with different categories of possible response values, or continuous variables) onto a common –1 to 1 scale for comparison and further use. This allows us to aggregate variables with disparate numbers of potential values. We next show how to concatenate the individual variables and obtain a measure of variable worth for fraud detection, and then how to obtain an overall holistic claim file suspicion value capable of being used to rank the claim files for determining which claims to pay and the order in which to investigate claims further for fraud. The proposed method provides three useful outputs not usually available with other unsupervised methods: (1) an ordinal measure of overall claim file fraud suspicion level, (2) a measure of the importance of each individual predictor variable in determining the overall suspicion levels of claims, and (3) a classification function capable of being applied to existing claims as well as new incoming claims. The overall claim file score is also available to be correlated with exogenous variables such as claimant demographics or highvolume physician or lawyer involvement. We illustrate that the incorporation of continuous variables in their continuous form helps classification and that the method has internal and external validity via empirical analysis of real data sets. A detailed application to automobile bodily injury fraud detection is presented.

Obesity and litigation predict workers' compensation costs associated with interbody cage lumbar fusion

Background context Results of lumbar fusion surgery have been mixed and procedures are costly. Interbody cage lumbar fusion (ICLF) has been advanced to improve arthrodesis and clinical outcomes; however, little attention has been given to ICLF costs or potential predictors of these expenses. Purpose To depict medical and compensation costs associated with ICLF in a Utah cohort of patients receiving workers' compensation as well as to investigate predictors of costs. Study design/setting A retrospective-cohort research design was used involving completion of presurgical and postsurgical medical record reviews and accrual of medical and compensation costs. Presurgical variables included in a regression model were presurgical spinal pathophysiology rating, obesity, and litigation status. Patient sample Forty-three consecutive patients who were compensated by the Workers' Compensation Fund of Utah and underwent ICLF. Outcome measures Total accrued compensation and medical costs. Methods A retrospective review of presurgical variables and total accrued compensation and medical costs was conducted. Results Multiple regression analysis indicated that nonpathophysiological factors predicted compensation costs (lawyer involvement [β=0.40]; obesity [β=0.34]). Specifically, compensation for those with versus without lawyers was $41,657 versus $24,837, and for those who were obese versus nonobese was $46,152 versus $28,168. Arthrodesis was correlated with medical costs (r=−0.47, p=.002), with incurred costs for patients achieving solid fusion versus pseudarthrosis equaling $38,881 versus $71,655, respectively. Conclusions Considerable costs were associated with ICLF, particularly for those who were obese, involved in litigation, or failed to achieve solid fusion. With regard to compensation costs, the findings support the importance of assessing nonpathophysiological factors in spinal fusion patients.

Prognostic Factors Associated With Minimal Improvement Following Acute Whiplash-Associated Disorders

Retrospective clinical cohort study. To identify the prognostic factors associated with a poor response to treatment in the early stages of a whiplash-associated disorder (WAD). Several demographic and clinical factors related to recovery following acute WADs have been identified. However, few longitudinal studies have investigated a multivariable model of recovery that includes socio-demographic, treatment, clinical, and nonclinical factors. A study cohort of 2,185 patients with acute or subacute WADs presenting to 48 rehabilitation clinics in 6 Canadian provinces were investigated for factors associated with failure to demonstrate a minimally important clinical change (10%) in the Canadian Back Institute Questionnaire (CBIQ) score between the initial and discharge rehabilitation visits. Multivariable analysis revealed eight prognostic factors associated with a negative outcome: 1) older age, 2) female gender, 3) increasing lag time between injury date and presentation for treatment, 4) initial pain location, 5) province of injury, 6) higher initial pain intensity, 7) lawyer involvement, and 8) at work at entry to the clinic. The effect of lawyer involvement was stronger for patients with less intense pain on initial visit (odds ratio = 2.97; 95% confidence interval, 1.77-4.99). Similarly, the effect of work status was stronger for patients with less intense pain on initial visit (odds ratio = 2.02; 95% confidence interval, 1.18-3.46). Researchers and clinicians should be aware of the potential for non-injury-related factors to delay recovery, and be aware of the interaction between the initial intensity of a patient's pain and other covariates when confirming these results.

Low back pain after traffic collisions: a population-based cohort study.

A population-based, incidence cohort study was conducted. To measure the incidence and prognosis for collision-related low back pain before and after a change in the insurance compensation system. Low back pain is a common and costly occupational injury. It also occurs after traffic collisions, but less is known about its frequency and recovery in this setting. An incidence cohort of 4473 low back pain injury claims was formed between July 1, 1994 and December 31, 1995 in Saskatchewan. On January 1, 1995 the public insurance system changed from a tort system to a no-fault system, eliminating compensation for pain and suffering. The incidence of claims and the time to claim closure were calculated before and after this change. Prognostic models were built using baseline and follow-up data. The 6-month incidence of claims decreased from 256 to 176 per 100,000 after the insurance change. The median time to claim closure dropped from 505 days for tort claims to 210 days and 216 days for claims made during the first and second 6 months of the no-fault period. Improvements in bodily pain and physical functioning and the absence of depressive symptoms were associated with faster claim closure. High pain intensity, female gender, full-time employment, concentration problems, and lawyer involvement early in the claim process delayed claim closure. Low back pain is a common traffic injury with a prolonged recovery. Its incidence and prognosis are affected by multiple factors, including the type of compensation system. Our study suggests that biopsychosocial factors are important in determining prognosis.

Lawyers in Agencies: Economics, Social Psychology, and Process

Underlying the discussion of the role of the government lawyer that follows lies the premise that lawyers within agencies are fundamentally different than other regulators. A particular regulatory process-and indeed the administrative state in general-would look quite different if we decided to exclude lawyers from the process. Moreover, our explicit or implicit decision about the contours of the role played by lawyers in the administrative state has important implications for our understanding of basic issues, such as the value of science and the value of advocacy. Similarly, excluding other specialists, such as economists or industry experts, also would produce interesting and important changes in the outcomes generated by the administrative state. To put the matter more precisely, there is no question that lawyers' involvement in the administrative process has both costs and benefits.1 The purpose of this essay is to explain the nature of these costs and benefits. The first section of the essay draws on insights from social psychology, providing an explanation for why lawyers' perspectives on regulatory issues differ dramatically from those of their non-regulatory colleagues. The second part describes some of the benefits from adding lawyers and lawyers' perspectives to the regulatory mix. In the third part of the article I discuss the costs that lawyer involvement imposes on a regulatory system. The conclusion is that the inability to quantify the costs and benefits associated with lawyer involvement in regulation makes it impossible to determine with any degree of certainty whether the benefits exceed the costs. On the other hand, the clearly identifiable benefits associated with utilizing lawyers in the regulatory process strongly suggest that it is highly unlikely that the optimal number of lawyers in the regulatory process is zero. It seems equally true,

The Value of Counsel: 20 Years of Representation before a Public Housing Eviction Board

Research into the effects of legal representation is rare because in many settings in which people might have lawyers, legal representation is either so common or so unusual that it cannot serve as a variable. Moreover, such research as exists is often poorly controlled or otherwise methodologically deficient. Our data set, derived from the case files of a public housing eviction board, allows us to overcome most of the difficulties that plague prior studies because it is relatively large and unusually rich in information about individual cases. We model the effects of various tenant and case characteristics on lawyer involvement as well as the effects of legal representation on case outcome. We find that lawyers tend to handle more difficult cases and that the likelihood that legal representation will aid a tenant depends on case type and changes over time. Our results, though likely to be context dependent, suggest how the effects of legal representation may be studied in other settings and the kinds of variables that may condition such effects.

Lawyer Involvement in Commercial Disputes

This article provides an insight into the role that lawyers play in commercial disputes. To do this it focuses on data drawn from a study of reservation of title claims,' the legal background to which is given below. The central issues raised are the importance for the lawyer of creating a negotiating identity within the disputing process and how this is achieved. These issues are illuminated by an examination of negotiation tactics and practices of lawyers, an analysis of what effective inter-lawyer negotiation is and the effect that this has on lawyer/client relationships.