How Legal Representation Affects Case Outcomes: An Empirical Perspective from Taiwan

Since the late 1980s, interdisciplinary scholars have conducted several empirical studies to examine to what extent legal representation affects case outcomes. Yet most of these empirical endeavors concentrate on legal representation in informal proceedings. This article revisits this question and reports the result of an independent empirical study using the official data on more than 100,000 civil cases terminated in Taiwan from 2000 to 2006. This study shows that cases are most unlikely to be settled when both parties are represented, while parties are most likely to settle a case when neither is represented. This study also shows that legal representation has no significant bearing on the case outcomes when the parties go to trial. A representation selection effect is proposed to explain these empirical results. This article argues that parties are quite apt to make deliberate and reasonable decisions on whether to seek legal representation in Taiwan and that the continental judge's active role in the adjudication process helps to explain why pro se litigants fare reasonably well in formal litigation. This study suggests that the influence of lawyers on how a case is disposed of in Taiwan may not be as strong as their colleagues' influence in the United States.