Economics Research Seminar

“Lawyer Assignment with Congestion: Redesigning the Comal County Pilot Program”

The American system of assigning public lawyers to indigent defendants relies on denying choice as a method of congestion management. An attempt to address the perceived unfairness of this system by allowing defendants to choose their lawyers in Comal County, Texas, led to overcrowding of the most popular lawyers. We propose the implementation of efficient and mobility-free assignments where no defendant prefers to unilaterally switch lawyers. We prove that such assignments always exist and, when feasible, coincide with the unique envyfree assignment. We demonstrate that while the mechanism deployed in the pilot program is obviously manipulable, no mobility-free mechanism is obviously manipulable. Under a mobility-free mechanism, any potential gain from individual manipulation is limited. We develop a class of congestion-cutting mechanisms ensuring efficient and mobility-free outcomes. Finally, we propose a practical design for assigning lawyers in places like Comal County that preserves choice while preventing overload, ensuring that any defendant who expresses a clear preference for less-congestion is never assigned to a lawyer with excessive caseload.