Legal Profession

Legal Profession Article

For-Profit Public Enforcement

Vol. 127 No. 3 This Article investigates an important yet undertheorized phenomenon: financial incentives in public enforcement. Each year, public enforcers assess billions of dollars in penalties and other financial sanctions for violations of state and federal law. Why? If the awards in question were the result of private lawsuits, the answer would be obvious. We expect that private enforcers – the victims of law violations and their fee-seeking attorneys – will attempt to maximize financial recoveries. Record recoveries come as no surprise in private class actions, for example. But dollar signs are harder to explain in the context of public enforcement. Unlike private attorneys who are paid a percentage of the recovery, public enforcers are paid by salary. They have no direct financial stake in successful enforcement efforts. We assume that public enforcers pursue financial awards only for their deterrent value, not for the benefits that such recoveries can bring the enforcement agency itself. Or do they? Contrary to the conventional wisdom on the division between public and private enforcement, this Article argues that public enforcers often seek large monetary awards for self-interested reasons divorced from the public interest in deterrence.
Legal Profession Response

Passion, Caution, and Evolution: The Legal Aid Movement and Empirical Studies of Legal Assistance

Responding to D. James Greiner, Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak, and Jonathan Hennessy, The Limits of Unbundled Legal Assistance: A Randomized Study in a Massachusetts District Court and Prospects for the Future, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 901 (2013)

Response to The Limits of Unbundled Legal Assistance: A Randomized Study in a Massachusetts District Court and Prospects for the Future
Vol. 126 No. 4