Clients must feel represented or they withhold facts and act destructively
Evidence
Relatedly, the client should not only be well-represented, but he or she should feel well-represented. Perhaps the most important person in any defense is the defendant. If the client is not on-board with the defense strategy, it will not go well. If he is in the jail, not going well would mean that he would be getting into fights, or talking to other inmates about his case, or not telling his attorney important facts. Moreover, if he thinks that the attorney does not understand him because the attorney is of a different race or ethnicity, he might not even try to share his concerns. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 689
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Links to the book’s overall bias theme: perceived race mismatch between attorney and client suppresses information flow, a concrete mechanism for how bias degrades legal outcomes.
Related
- Perceived racial distance from counsel suppresses client disclosure of case facts (similarity 0.91)
- Defense attorneys show measurable race bias despite their professional role defending clients. (similarity 0.81)
- Defense attorneys avoid discussing racial bias because they fear it as a weakness (similarity 0.81)
- Criminal defense attorneys exhibit implicit racial bias affecting client outcomes (similarity 0.80)
- Even well-intentioned defense attorneys harbor an unacknowledged bias blind spot (similarity 0.79)