Working Papers

Compensation and Incentives in Public Defense
New draft in progress. Older version here.

Abstract: Most criminal defendants in the United States are in poverty and are entitled to publicly financed legal representation. This paper assesses whether pay structures impact lawyer effort and outcomes of cases involving indigent defendants. I study this question in the context of a natural experiment in North Carolina where six counties were arbitrarily chosen to change compensation for assigned counsel from an hourly rate to a flat fee per case disposed, while all other counties remained under an hourly basis. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that this change in compensation structure resulted in defendants being 11% more likely to be convicted and 37% more likely to be incarcerated, a result driven by an increase in guilty pleas. Exploring potential mechanisms, I find evidence that these results are primarily driven by reduced lawyer effort under flat fee pay: lawyers reported spending 11% fewer hours on indigent cases, disposed of cases 25% sooner on average, and were 36% more likely to dispose a case on the same day as their first meeting with the defendant. I do not find evidence that the impact on case outcomes is driven by lawyer selection or migration. This paper informs policy questions on funding and compensation for publicly financed criminal defense. It also demonstrates the importance of incentives when contracting for the provision of public defense, as failing to reward lawyer effort may undermine the right to effective counsel guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment.

Work in Progress

(To be updated soon)