Public versus private defense: Can money buy justice?

With the expansion of the right to legal counsel and the state's need to provide legal counsel, public defenders came to be viewed with suspicion and mistrust. The widely shared image by the public was that lawyers who became public defenders were those unable to succeed in the private sector. Very few studies had examined the legal outcome and efficiency of public versus private legal defense. The purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which a private or public defense affects the outcome of the legal process in Israel.