[gov3009-l] Wolos Pattanayak on "What Difference Representation?”

Hello, We hope you can join us tomorrow, Wednesday, February 16th at the Applied Statistics Workshop when we will be happy to have Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak presenting joint work with Jim Greiner. Their paper focuses on an experiment where offers of legal representation were randomized to claimants. You will find an abstract and a link to the paper below. As usual, the workshop will begin at 12 noon with lunch and wrap up at 1:30. "What Difference Representation?” (with Jim Greiner) Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak Harvard Department of Statistics February 16th, 2011, 12 noon K354 CGIS Knafel (1737 Cambridge St) Paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1708664&download=yes Abstract: We report the results of the first in a series of randomized control trials designed to measure the effect of an offer of, and the actual use of, legal representation. The results are unexpected. In the context of administrative litigation to determine eligibility for unemployment benefits, a service provider’s offer of representation to a claimant had no statistically significant effect on the claimant’s probability of a victory, but the offer caused a delay in the proceeding. Because a substantial percentage of the provider’s client base consisted of claimants who were initially denied benefits but who would have that initial denial reversed as a result of the litigation, the offer of representation inflicted a harm upon such claimants in the form of an additional waiting time for benefits to begin, this with no discernible increase in the probability of a favorable outcome. In other words, within the limits of statistical uncertainty, these claimants would have been better off without the offer of representation. The size of the delay (a median effect of about 16 days, depending on how measured) was not large in absolute terms, and would be negligible in many other legal settings, but was relevant in the context of this particular administrative and legal framework, one in which speed has remained an extraordinary concern for decades. Moreover, in a small number of cases with a certain profile, the delay caused the unemployment system to continue paying benefits erroneously for a longer period of time, potentially imposing costs on the financing of the unemployment system. We were also able to verify a delay effect due to the actual use of (as opposed to an offer of) representation; we could come to no firm conclusion on the effect of actual use of representation on win loss. We caution against both over- and under-generalization of these study results. Stepping back, we use these results as a springboard for a comprehensive review of the quantitative literature on the effect of representation in civil proceedings. We find that this literature provides virtually no credible information, excepting the results of two randomized evaluations occurring in different legal contexts and separated by over three decades. We conclude by advocating for, and describing challenges associated with, a large program of randomized evaluation of the provision of representation, particularly by legal services providers. Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/