A recent presentation by ILS Research Director Andy Davies on how empirical research relates to policy reform is now online here (beginning at 13:25):



Several defender agencies around the country – including ILS – have begun to develop research capacity. Does this capacity building help to drive reform in indigent legal services? In this presentation Davies looks to several examples of attempted reform from around the country – both successful and unsuccessful – to try and understand how this research-to-reform relationship might actually work.

He argues that four types of research have historically played a role in promoting reform:

1. Routine tracking of data for monitoring or oversight purposes over time
2. Use of data to expose inequities across geography, race, or other dimensions
3. Projects which evaluate whether policies are performing as expected
4. Research which seems to predict the future

Research can help by giving reformers’ arguments credibility above all, he argues, because “Research, at its best, exposes the truth.” In using research, reformers can come to be seen as experts in their field, and agencies can come to be seen as responsible, self-aware and accountable custodians of the defense function.

But he also says that research by itself is often not enough to make reform happen. Other things can be equally or more important. In particular the presence of other (non-defense) parties interested in the reform and willing to lobby for it, determined and persistent leadership that can weather setbacks, and simple luck, can all play a role.

The presentation was made possible through the initiative of the Right to Counsel National Campaign, a project of American University’s Justice Programs Office.