Law
Sharpen judgement. Recognise bias. Strengthen legal reliability.
Legal decisions are meant to be consistent, traceable and independent of irrelevant factors.
Research shows that this systematically fails in practice.
Experienced judges, prosecutors and expert witnesses judge differently depending on when they decide, how a case is framed and which number happens to be mentioned first. In a study with German judges and prosecutors, a randomly rolled dice number measurably influenced the sentencing recommendations of experienced legal professionals, even though the dice roll had no bearing whatsoever on the facts of the case (Englich, Mussweiler & Strack, 2006).
Expertise changes which biases take effect. It does not eliminate them.
I help judges, law firms and legal departments make these patterns visible and secure judgement quality at a structural level.
Where judgement quality breaks down in the succession process
Anchoring in sentencing and damages
Numerical starting points anchor legal judgements disproportionately, even when the number is obviously irrelevant.
In one study, judges shifted their sentencing recommendations measurably upward after rolling a high number, even though the dice roll had no factual bearing on the decision (Englich, Mussweiler & Strack, 2006).
The sentence shifts because a number is in the room, regardless of where it came from or whether it matters.
Hindsight bias in negligence cases
Those who know how an event turned out overestimate, in retrospect, how foreseeable it was.
In law, this is particularly consequential because negligence judgements necessarily require looking back. Oeberst and Goeckenjan (2016) demonstrated in a controlled study with judges that knowing an adverse outcome had occurred alone led to stricter negligence assessments, even though the knowledge available at the time of the original decision was identical.
The outcome of an event changes the perception of its preventability retroactively.
Confirmation bias in the weighing of evidence
Hypotheses formed early on shape subsequent information processing.
Confirming findings carry more weight, contradictory evidence is sought less actively and assessed less generously.
In the evaluation of evidence, this means that an early suspicion deforms the entire subsequent process without that effect being visible from the inside. Conviction grows while the depth of scrutiny falls.
Noise in sentencing
Comparable cases receive systematically different sentences depending on which judge, which court or which day decides them.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission documented substantial sentencing disparities between judges in the same cities for comparable cases (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2019).
Noise is just as consequential in the legal system as bias, but it is discussed far less often, because it has no discernible direction and therefore remains invisible in everyday practice.
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Adebola Olaborede & Lirieka Meintjes-van Der Walt. (2021). Cognitive Bias Affecting Decision-Making in the Legal Process. Obiter, 41(4), 806–830. https://doi.org/10.17159/obiter.v41i4.10489
Danziger, S., Levav, J., & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(17), 6889–6892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018033108
Englich, B. (2006). Blind or Biased? Justitia’s Susceptibility to Anchoring Effects in the Courtroom Based on Given Numerical Representations. Law & Policy, 28(4), 497–514. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.2006.00236.x
Englich, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2001). Sentencing Under Uncertainty: Anchoring Effects in the Courtroom. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31(7), 1535–1551. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb02687.x
Englich, B., Mussweiler, T., & Strack, F. (2005). The Last Word in Court—A Hidden Disadvantage for the Defense. Law and Human Behavior, 29(6), 705–722. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-005-8380-7
Englich, B., Mussweiler, T., & Strack, F. (2006). Playing Dice With Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts’ Judicial Decision Making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(2), 188–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205282152
Guthrie, C. P., Rachlinski, J. J., & Wistrich, A. J. (2001). Inside the Judicial Mind. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.257634
Guthrie, C., Rachlinski, J. J., & Wistrich, A. J. (2007). Blinking on the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases. Cornell Law Review, 93(1), 1–44.
Malegiannaki, A.-C., Chatzopoulos, A., & Tsagkaridis, K. (2025). Assessing judges’ use and awareness of cognitive heuristic decision-making. Frontiers in Cognition, 4, 1421488. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcogn.2025.1421488
Oeberst, A., & Goeckenjan, I. (2016). When being wise after the event results in injustice: Evidence for hindsight bias in judges’ negligence assessments. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 22(3), 271–279. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000091
Peer, E., & Gamliel, E. (2013). Heuristics and Biases in Judicial Decisions. Court Review: The Journal of the American Judges Association, 49, 114–118.
Teichman, D., Zamir, E., & Ritov, I. (2023). Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 20(4), 852–894. https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12365
U.S. Sentencing Commission. (2019). Intra-city differences in federal sentencing practices: Federal district judges in 30 cities, 2005–2017. U.S. Sentencing Commission. https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-publications/2019/20190108_Intra-City-Report.pdf
Wistrich, A. J., & Rachlinski, J. J. (2017). Implicit Bias in Judicial Decision Making How It Affects Judgment and What Judges Can Do About It. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2934295
How I work
I do not restructure legal processes or supplement legal expertise. I work where expertise is in place but systematic judgement traps are undermining decision quality.
To do that, I make cognitive biases and judgement variability tangible within the legal context, drawing on real cases and research findings. From there, we develop together checkpoints, evaluation standards and reflection formats that work in everyday legal practice.
Short formats
A 20-minute input for internal training or professional events
A 30 to 60-minute keynote, with or without Q&A
Both formats are suited to opening up a topic that many recognise but rarely approach in a structured way.
Workshops
90 to 180 minutes, interactive and case-based
Suited to law firms, legal departments and bar associations who want to identify and work through specific patterns in their own practice.
Advisory
Facilitated clarification sessions for committees and decision-making groups, as well as ongoing advisory work for law firms and legal departments
The focus here is not on one-off awareness-raising but on structural changes to the judgement process.
Who this is for
This work is for judges and courts who want to address judgement consistency at a structural level,
for law firms and legal departments who want to examine their internal decision processes for blind spots,
and for forensic experts and expert witnesses who want to understand and reduce their own judgement variability.
What all of them share is the question of why legal judgements systematically vary despite expertise and care.
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