The study was about Israeli parole boards, not US court cases. The study was flawed from the beginning because they incorrectly categorized favorable/unfavorabl

The study was about Israeli parole boards, not US court cases. The study was flawed from the beginning because they incorrectly categorized favorable/unfavorable decisions. However, ignoring that: The daily court schedules were arranged to minimize the amount of time lawyers and prisoners spent waiting in court. Each lawyer would usually represent several prisoners, and would go through all of their clients consecutively. The court would schedule the lawyers and clients starting after meal breaks. After all lawyers and their clients that were scheduled for a block of time had gone through, then they would fill the remaining time until the next meal with cases by prisoners without lawyers. Cases with lawyers had a 35% favorable outcome rate, while cases without lawyers would have a 15% favorable outcome rate. In addition, each lawyer would present their best case first and worst cases last. So yes, the daily calendars were arranged such that the first prisoner after a meal break was extremely likely to get a favorable outcome, and the prisoner right before a meal break had only a 15% chance of a favorable outcome.