Research Guides : Data Resources and Statistics for Legal Research: Current Awareness

Numeracy

Numeracy and Legal Decision Making - SSRN Health and financial decision-making literatures have chronicled how people’s numerical abilities affect their decisions. Until now, however, there has been no empirical study of whether numeracy — or people’s ability to understand and use numbers — also interacts with legal decision making. This Article presents the first such study, and describes three original findings related to the role of numeracy in legal decision making. First, the study shows a surprisingly high level of math skill among law students, especially given the common folk wisdom that lawyers are bad at math. Second, although prior research in non-legal contexts has shown that people with low numeracy are particularly susceptible to cognitive bias, we detect no significant relationship between law students’ math skills and their susceptibility to bias or framing effects. Finally, and most worryingly, our findings show that the substance of legal analysis varies with math skill for at least some subset of cases.
Numeracy and Legal Decision Making - Hein This Article presents an empirical study of how numeracy-or math skill-relates to legal decision making. We describe three findings. First, the study shows a surprisingly high level of math skill among law students, especially given the common folk wisdom that lawyers are bad at math. Second, although prior research in non-legal contexts has shown that people with low numeracy are particularly susceptible to cognitive bias, we detect no significant relationship between law students' math skills and their susceptibility to bias or framing effects. Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, our findings show that the substance of legal analysis varies with math skill for at least some subset of cases. In particular, we find that law students with lower numeracy make decisions that are less consistent with negligence doctrine than students with higher numeracy.

Data Visualizations

Ted Talk - How Juries are Fooled by Statistics

Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly reveals the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics -- and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials.

Workshop Presentation

All About Statistics
This presentation includes links to books and articles on empirical research, content to increase current awareness, it covers software resources for statistical analysis and where you can find help on campus for empirical research. PDF version
All About Statistics
This presentation includes links to books and articles on empirical research, content to increase current awareness, it covers software resources for statistical analysis and where you can find help on campus for empirical research. PowerPoint version

Math - Who Needs It?

Research: Poor math skills affect legal decision-making There is a "highly significant relationship" between law students' math skills and the substance of their legal analysis, according to research from Arden Rowell, a professor of law and the Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Scholar at Illinois.
Newsflash: Lawyers Need To Know Math Want a Job? Better Learn Finance and Statistics

Blogs

Empirical Legal Studies

Institutes and Centers

The Society for Empirical Legal Studies