IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/acb/cbeeco/2021-678.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Of hired guns and ideologues: why would a law firm ever retain an honest expert witness?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Richardson

Abstract

We suppose that expert witnesses are, generically, either honest in their assessment of a fact situation or are mercenary ‘hired guns’ that advocate for their retaining party. The type of a witness is known to law firms, who engage with them repeatedly, but not to courts. If the only way an honest witness can credibly reveal their type to a court is by siding with the opposing party then the question arises of why a law firm would ever retain an honest expert. We show that it can act as a signaling device in a game between the law firms to communicate private information regarding a party’s confidence in winning the case. Our results indicate, amongst other things, that the ‘English’ rule of costs allocation can make a socially desirable separating equilibrium less likely, compared to the ‘American’ rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Richardson, 2021. "Of hired guns and ideologues: why would a law firm ever retain an honest expert witness?," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2021-678, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2021-678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/econ/wp678.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yeon-Koo Che & Sergei Severinov, 2017. "Disclosure and Legal Advice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 188-225, May.
    2. Piotr Dworczak & Alessandro Pavan, 2022. "Preparing for the Worst but Hoping for the Best: Robust (Bayesian) Persuasion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(5), pages 2017-2051, September.
    3. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2018. "On the value of persuasion by experts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 103-123.
    4. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Deb, Joyee, 2014. "What is a good reputation? Career concerns with heterogeneous audiences," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 44-50.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hedlund, Jonas, 2024. "Signaling through Bayesian persuasion," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 15-27.
    2. Semyon Malamud & Andreas Schrimpf, 2021. "Persuasion by Dimension Reduction," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 21-69, Swiss Finance Institute.
    3. Alexei Parakhonyak & Anton Sobolev, 2022. "Persuasion Without Priors," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2022_359, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    4. Zegners, Dainis, 2017. "Building an Online Reputation with Free Content: Evidence from the E-book Market," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168293, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Malamud, Semyon & Cieslak, Anna & Schrimpf, Paul, 2021. "Optimal Transport of Information," CEPR Discussion Papers 15859, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Krishnamurthy Iyer & Haifeng Xu & You Zu, 2023. "Markov Persuasion Processes with Endogenous Agent Beliefs," Papers 2307.03181, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    7. Alon, Shiri & Auster, Sarah & Gayer, Gabi & Minardi, Stefania, 2023. "Persuasion with Limited Data: A Case-Based Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 18428, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Frédéric Loss & Antoine Renucci, 2021. "Promotions, managerial project choice, and implementation effort," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 799-819, November.
    9. Tao Lin & Yiling Chen, 2024. "Generalized Principal-Agent Problem with a Learning Agent," Papers 2402.09721, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    10. Evans, R. & Reiche, S., 2022. "When is a Contrarian Adviser Optimal?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2222, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    11. Xiaoyu Cheng, 2020. "Ambiguous Persuasion: An Ex-Ante Formulation," Papers 2010.05376, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    12. Shaofei Jiang, 2024. "Costly Persuasion by a Partially Informed Sender," Papers 2401.14087, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    13. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Miriam Krausz & Shmuel Nitzan, 2018. "The effect of democratic decision-making on investment in reputation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 155-164, October.
    14. Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler, 2021. "Persuasion with Ambiguous Receiver Preferences," Papers 2109.11536, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    15. Alonso, Ricardo & Zachariadis, Konstantinos E., 2024. "Persuading large investors," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126040, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Frederic Koessler & Marco Scarsini & Tristan Tomala, 2025. "Full Implementation via Information Design in Nonatomic Games," Papers 2502.05920, arXiv.org.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Tan Gan & Yingkai Li, 2023. "Managing Persuasion Robustly: The Optimality of Quota Rules," Papers 2310.10024, arXiv.org.
    18. Jesse Bull & Joel Watson, 2019. "Statistical evidence and the problem of robust litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(4), pages 974-1003, December.
    19. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Optimal and Robust Disclosure of Public Information," Papers 2203.16809, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    20. Jonas Hedlund & T. Florian Kauffeldt & Malte Lammert, 2021. "Persuasion under ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 455-482, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    expert witnesses; signaling; litigation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2021-678. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.