Morawetz on "Counterbalancing Distorted Incentives in Supreme Court Pro Bono Practice"

In addition to the works cited in the prior post on the Supreme Court pro bono bar, historians and legal scholars who are thinking about the impact of competition on Supreme Court practice may be interested in "Counterbalancing Distorted Incentives in Supreme Court Pro Bono Practice," an article recently published in the New York University Law Review by Nancy Morawetz (NYU--Law). It caught my eye because it does begin with historical framing, although it's mostly a normative work. The abstract of the article follows, and the full article is here.

The emergence of a new Supreme Court Pro Bono Bar, made up of specialty practices and law school Supreme Court clinics, has altered the dynamic of litigation related to public interest issues. The new Bar often brings expertise in Supreme Court litigation to cases where there may otherwise be a dearth of resources to support high quality lawyering. But at the same time, this new Bar is subject to market pressures that have important consequences. This Article shows how members of this new Bar are engaged in a race for opportunities to handle Supreme Court cases on the merits. At the certiorari stage, this Bar can be expected to engage in truncated case analysis, avoid coordination with lawyers handling similar cases, and otherwise make decisions that are influenced by each firm’s interest in being in a position to handle cases on the merits before the Supreme Court. Moreover, throughout the litigation, this Bar may be influenced by the merits opportunity that provided the incentive to take the case in the first place.

This Article explores the implications of this new dynamic in Supreme Court litigation for both pro bono practices and public interest practice communities. With respect to pro bono practices, this Article proposes principles that firms could adopt, including those that relate to the selection of cases for free representation and those that relate to the nature of representation that the pro bono practices provide once the firm has taken on representation. With respect to public interest practice communities, this Article considers the strategic decisions that practice communities face in light of the new Supreme Court Pro Bono Bar. This Article argues that practice communities must anticipate Supreme Court activity on the issues that interest them and must engage constructively both with lawyers whose cases might be possible targets for a petition for writ of certiorari and with the Supreme Court Pro Bono Bar.