I examine the incentives and effort choices of lawyers that reflect their anticipation that those perceived as high-talent lawyers will be able to command higher fees in future contracts they are offered by the observers of their effort levels. The analysis employs three versions of a two-type...

Parties engaged in a litigation generally enter the discovery process with different informations regarding their case and/or an unequal endowment in terms of skill and ability to produce evidence and predict the outcome of a trial. Hence, they have to bear different legal costs to assess the...

This paper examines the strategic effects of case preparation in litigation. Specifically, it shows how the pretrial efforts incurred by one party may alter its adversary’s incentives to settle. We build a sequential game with one-sided asymmetric information where the informed party first...

Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the...

We characterize optimal selling protocols/equilibria of a game in which an Agent first puts hidden effort to acquire information and then transacts with a Firm that uses this information to take a decision. We determine the equilibrium payoffs that maximize incentives to acquire information. Our...