The Market for Lawyers and the Quality of Legal Services

Abstract

Studying the strategic interaction between litigants, lawyers and judges, we analyze the value of the quality of legal representation and how public information over quality affects the outcome of the judicial process. Judges have reputational concerns and the quality of lawyers is reflected in knowledge of legal principles and in proof-taking ability. Deriving the demand for legal representation and the market equilibrium, we show that higher quality of legal representation is welfare increasing but better information over quality may be welfare reducing. We discuss the implications of our results on the desirability of quality ceritfication, such as the Queen's Counselor system