Litigation-Driven Scholarship

Legal Affairs has a debate this week that promises to be interesting, relating to studies or other scholarship that are motivated by the fact of litigation.  The participants are Michael L. Martinez of Crowell & Moring and Jay P. Kesan at the University of Illinois.

The introduction to the debate is a tad curious, suggesting as it does that most of these sorts of studies are performed by defendant companies.  My work (see the current article on SSRN) suggests that, while defense-funded studies are not unheard of, most such research is performed on behalf of plaintiffs’ counsel.