Existing scholarship finds that having an attorney in immigration legal proceedings increases the chances of a favorable outcome. This work, however, often acknowledges that the representation effect is underexplained: selection may explain outcomes, and variation among attorneys is difficult to assess. Through 103 interviews with attorneys who practice immigration law in three organizational environments (nonprofit legal services, private firms, and corporate law firm pro bono programs) in two East Coast areas, this paper argues that attorneys' sorting of clients between different types of legal organizations helps explain the representation effect. Attorneys define what type of case is a “good fit” for their representation, selecting cases they think they can help increase the probability of a favorable outcome. However, what they define as a “good fit” varies by attorneys' practice environments, and centers not only on the facts or characteristics of a client and their case, but also attorneys' organizational constraints. By documenting the central role of practice environment variation and its organizational constraints on attorneys' case selection, this paper helps explain the representation effect and its implications for increasing vulnerable immigrants' access to legal representation in the United States.

中文翻译：

---

“合适”：客户在非营利、私人和无偿移民律师之间进行分类

现有奖学金发现，在移民法律诉讼中聘请律师会增加获得有利结果的机会。然而，这项工作通常承认代理效应未得到充分解释：选择可以解释结果，并且律师之间的差异难以评估。通过对在两个东海岸地区的三种组织环境（非营利性法律服务、私人律师事务所和公司律师事务所公益项目）中从事移民法的律师进行 103 次采访，本文认为律师在不同类型的法律组织之间对客户进行分类有助于解释表征效应。律师定义什么类型的案件“适合”他们的代表，选择他们认为可以帮助增加有利结果的可能性的案件。然而，他们对“合适”的定义因律师的执业环境而异，不仅以客户及其案件的事实或特征为中心，而且还以律师的组织限制为中心。通过记录实践环境变化的核心作用及其对律师案件选择的组织限制，本文有助于解释代表效应及其对增加弱势移民在美国获得法律代表的影响。