Time: Sept. 21  3:00-4:30 PM

Venue: LIB 1113

Author: Zhuang Liu (HKU), Wenwei Peng (HKUST), Shaoda Wang (UChicago), Daniel Yi Xu (Duke)

Speaker: Shaoda Wang, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy; Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Moderator: Camila Fernanda Sáez Muller, Assistant Professor of Economics at Duke Kunshan University

Speaker’s bio: Shaoda Wang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He also serves as the Deputy Faculty Director at the Energy Policy Institute at UChicago, China center (EPIC-China). He is an applied economist with research interests in development economics, environmental economics, and political economy. His main research agenda aims at understanding the political economy of public policy, with a regional focus on China.

Abstract: This paper studies the roles of lawyers in shaping judicial and economic outcomes, exploiting the unique setting of “revolving-door” lawyers in China’s judicial system. By compiling the first comprehensive dataset covering the universes of judges, lawyers, law firms, litigants, and lawsuits in China from 2014 to 2022, we identify over 15,000 judges who left their positions and joined private law firms as lawyers, which accounts for 7.5% of all judges (1.5% of all lawyers) nationwide. We document four main empirical patterns. First, in both criminal and commercial lawsuits, these revolving-door lawyers enjoy significant advantages in securing favorable court decisions for their clients. Second, leveraging intra-lawyer variation in performances at home vs. away courts, we show that the edge for revolving door lawyers come from both “know who” and “know how.” Third, revolving-door lawyers add significant values to their firms beyond their roles as frontline lawyers, by mentoring junior colleagues and attracting larger clients. Fourth, the revolving door lawyers, by joining larger law firms that serve richer/larger customers, create systematic inequalities in criminal and civil trials in China.