
The Impact of Working Conditions on Productivity
Date: November 19, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM
Public defenders provide essential legal representation to people who cannot afford an attorney. Yet, they do so under notoriously heavy caseloads, raising important questions about how workload affects the delivery of justice.
As part of a larger study on public defense, Dr. Amy Mahler analyzed case records from two U.S. states and examined how strict case assignment rules created natural variation in attorney workloads. Her research also incorporated detailed time-use data to better understand how public defenders allocated their limited resources across different tasks.
Dr. Mahler’s research sheds light on the connection between workloads and case outcomes in public defense and explores what these connections mean for ensuring fair and high-quality, effective representation.