Alumni Relationships and Judicial Bias

28 Pages Posted: 8 Dec 2020 Last revised: 27 Mar 2024

See all articles by Tianwang Liu

Tianwang Liu

Harvard University - Department of Economics

David Zhang

Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business

Date Written: October 15, 2020

Abstract

We examine whether law school alumni relationships between lawyers and judges is correlated with case outcomes. We show that, in the context of medical malpractice lawsuits filed in Florida, having a plaintiff's attorney who attended the same law school as a randomly assigned judge increases the chances of recovery by about 2 percentage points. We further show that the effect is more pronounced between lawyers and judges with a larger age gap, consistent with an age-dependent effect rather than a personal relationship effect from lawyers and judges who overlapped in school. Our results suggest that case outcomes can be biased when lawyers and judges are part of the same affinity groups.

Keywords: lawyers, law school, judges, judge bias, returns to schooling

Suggested Citation

Liu, Tianwang and Zhang, David, Alumni Relationships and Judicial Bias (October 15, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3711873 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3711873

Tianwang Liu

Harvard University - Department of Economics ( email )

HOME PAGE: http://https://scholar.harvard.edu/tianwang/home

David Zhang (Contact Author)

Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business ( email )

6100 South Main Street
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77005-1892
United States

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