Understanding Why Good Lawyers Go Bad: Using Case Studies in Teaching Cognitive Bias in Legal Decision-Making, 9 Clinical L. Rev. 731 (2003).
Abstract from the Clinical Legal Association:
This Article examines the impact of characteristic weaknesses of human reasoning on legal decision-making, and the ways that we can help our students to recognize and protect themselves against these cognitive limitations. The Article first reviews and explains the well established empirical findings in cognitive psychology on how cognitive “heuristics” can undermine rational judgment. Like many aspects of effective lawyering, the impact of these heuristics is best learned by students not abstractly but in the context of actual, or effectively imagined, lawyering experiences. The Article demonstrates the value of Acase studies, similar to those employed in management and public policy schools, to provide this context, and argues for the inclusion of such legal decision-making case studies in clinical and related courses to supplement existing clinical education on professional judgment. The Article concludes by presenting a model case study fashioned on the Woburn, Massachusetts environmental lawsuit recounted in Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action, a book whose vivid contextual portrayal illuminates the potential cognitive biases implicated in the decisions by the plaintiffs’ attorneys not to settle the case before trial, and so underlines the importance, and potential, of addressing these issues in legal education.
The Demeanor Gap: Race, Lie Detection, and the Jury, 33 Conn. L. Rev. 1 (2000) (lead article in volume)
What Would Learned Hand Do?: Inadvertent Waiver of Attorney-Client Privilege and the New Information Technologies, 66 Brook. L. Rev. 361 (2000) (article examining effect of new information technologies on ethical rules governing protection of attorney-client privilege).
A Portrait of an Artist as a Wise Man: Judge Altimari’s Jurisprudence, 15 Touro L. Rev. 1439 (1999) (co-author) (essay reviewing the personal political theory of the late Hon. Frank X. Altimari on the United States Court of Appeals).
The Residual Exceptions to the Federal Hearsay Rules: The Futile and Misguided Attempt to Restrain Judicial Discretion, 80 Geo. L. J. 873 (1992) (student note)
Influences on the Jury, 79 Geo. L. J. 1004 (1991) (contributing student author)
