Tort Reform and Access to Justice: How Legal Environments Shape Lawyers’ Case Selection

How do lawyers decide which cases to accept? Previous studies suggest that they use a simple risk/return formula to make such decisions. I argue, however, that legal environments also shape lawyers’ decisions. Analyses of in-depth interviews with lawyers across four states demonstrate that lawyers make different decisions about cases in different legal environments. Lawyers in states without tort reform emphasize the importance of how “likeable” a client may be to a potential jury, whereas lawyers in states with tort reform instead focus on the defendant’s “liability.” These differences have important implications for who has access to the civil justice system, and for consumer and medical protections more generally.