Posner and Yoon on What Judges Think of the Qualify of Legal Representation in Federal Criminal Cases

I just reviewed Richard A. Posner and Albert H. Yoon, What Judges Think of the Quality of Legal Representation, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 317 (2011). I thought some snippets from the article about federal criminal cases might be interesting to readers (some is repetitive, depending upon context in the article; also some footnotes are omitted):

[pp. 319-320]

We found that judges perceive significant disparities in the quality of legal representation in criminal cases, and that these disparities occur in 20% to 40% of the cases they hear. Federal judges generally rate prosecutors as comparable in quality to public defenders and significantly better than court-appointed counsel or retained counsel.

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