This project focuses on the effects of legal counsel from the perspective of "party capability theory," a set of ideas which proposes that powerful and organized parties who use courts routinely hold tactical and strategic advantage over weaker parties, especially individual litigants who use judicial resources only intermittently. Specifically, it investigates whether and how disparities between counsel related resources affect the ruling made by an appellate court. In addition, the research employs a multivariate statistical model to assess the importance of counsel related resources in relation to other explanations for outcomes in appellate courts. In addition to advancing empirical understanding of whether and how lawyers make a difference in litigation, the cross-national framework, focusing on the English Court of Appeals, enables exploration of the extent to which party capability theory is context-bound to the U.S. experience.
