Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game

Author
Keywords
Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility that the costs
and benefits of legal representation are structured so that each individual
party seeks legal representation in the hope of exploiting the other party,
while knowing full well that failing to do so will open up the possibility
of being exploited. The first part of the paper shows how the structure of
the incentives faced by the parties may be estimated, and the second
describes the results of empirical tests in several different settings.
The empirical results strongly suggest that the parties do face "prisoner's
dilemma" incentives, although no attempt is made to determine whether the
parties respond to these incentives.

Year of Publication
1990
Number
270
Date Published
09/1990
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
8224
URL
Working Papers