Overworking Public Defenders.

Most U.S. criminal defendants are represented by government-employed public defenders (PDs). PDs consistently face higher caseloads than recommended by professional guidelines, but systematic evidence of the impacts of excessive workloads on defendants is lacking. This paper uses novel case-level data from three U.S. counties and an instrumental variable approach to study the causal impacts of high caseloads on PD time allocations and defendant outcomes.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id|EQUALS|4401227