Abstract
Civil rights cases brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are very difficult for plaintiffs to win. Commentators generally blame stringent doctrinal and pleading standards for plaintiffs’ low rates of success. This Article instead focuses on factors related to attorneys who litigate civil rights cases: the identity of the attorney (i.e., whether the attorney is a solo practitioner or affiliated with a firm or a nonprofit), the prior experience of the attorney in litigating civil rights cases, and whether these two elements are related to plaintiff success. We identified and coded the dockets for 463 civil rights cases, or 20% of all cases initiated between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2022, in five federal district courts (the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Southern District of Texas, the Northern District of California, the Middle District of Florida, and the Northern District of Ohio). This large, original data set yielded a wealth of information about the relationship between the existence of representation, the identity of attorneys who litigate civil rights cases, the prior experience of attorneys who litigate civil rights cases, and how all of these factors relate to plaintiff success in civil rights litigation. Our Article answers the question posed in the title in the affirmative: Yes, available evidence indicates that attorneys matter in civil rights litigation. We find an association between some of the information we compiled in our data set and the degree of plaintiff success in litigation, particularly with respect to prior attorney experience. However, more information and study are needed to determine exactly how attorneys matter. We conclude with the hope that our Article will serve as a foundational step in promoting research about an understanding of how attorneys influence litigation under § 1983.
Recommended Citation
Nancy Leong, Mary Emmerling, Aili Miyake & Rochelle Orlando, Do Attorneys Matter in Civil Rights Litigation?, 20 FIU L. Rev. 913 (2026), https://doi.org/10.25148/lawrev.20.3.8.
