An Empirical Study of Publicly Appointed and Privately Retained Defense Lawyers in Plea Bargaining: The Chinese Experience

A trial waiver system was implemented and tested in 18 large cities of China during 2016–2018. The present study compares publicly appointed and privately retained defense lawyers in plea-bargaining in the tested system. The comparison is to assess the degree of their participation in all the plea-bargaining phases and the case outcomes. Data collected from a sample of defense lawyers from one of the large cities was used to conduct the assessment. The data indicate that publicly appointed lawyers had a significantly lower degree of participation in all the plea-bargaining phases than privately retained lawyers did. No significant difference has been found for the case outcomes between publicly appointed and privately retained defense lawyers. The implications of these findings are discussed.