The US Courts’ news service posted last week about a preliminary report by Donna Stienstra at the Federal Judicial Center that shows the extent to which federal courts use ADR. Thirty years after a handful of courts first began experimenting with ADR, every federal district court now authorizes some form of ADR, and a third of courts authorize multiple ADR processes. During the year ending June 30, 2011, more than 28,000 cases were referred to ADR in 49 district courts (out of 94 total district courts; statistics weren’t available for the remaining courts). (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘early neutral evaluation (ENE)’
New Report Shows US Federal Courts Embrace ADR
Just Court ADR, June 26th, 2012Lawyers Overconfident about Outcomes
Susan M. Yates, May 24th, 2010An interesting study written up in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law found that lawyers are not good at predicting case outcomes. They tend to be overconfident in predicting how cases will turn out and, even when considering how their cases went in retrospect, they think they turned out better than they did.
Lawyer overconfidence may not seem like news, but whether lawyers have an accurate sense of how their cases will turn out determines how they handle the case, what resources are used, and eventually how satisfied their clients are with their lawyers and the judicial system. So, while it is not news, the question of what to do about it is worth considering.
Interestingly, this propensity to be overconfident does not vary based on years of experience of the lawyer. (more…)
