With corporate legal departments facing financial constraints, litigation funders like Bentham IMF are emerging as vital partners for companies looking to recover assets and protect their rights in the marketplace.
In our conversations introducing commercial litigation funding to the Canadian legal market, we are frequently asked about maintenance and champerty. Under current Canadian jurisprudence, third-party funding does not offend the doctrines of maintenance and champerty.
Bentham’s Ralph Sutton and Julia Gewolb weigh in on the implications of Judge Illston’s decision in Gbarabe v. Chevron Corp., No. 14-cv-00173, 2016 WL 4154849 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 5, 2016) to compel a class action plaintiff to produce his confidential litigation funding agreement to the defendant.
While each funder uses a unique set of criteria to assess the potential value of investing in a case, lawyers are likely to find similarities in the factors taken into consideration.
When lawyers become comfortable with explaining the intricacies of litigation funding, they become better counselors to their clients because they are able to present a broader array of options for financing a case.
When growing a legal practice, existing clients tend to be the best source of further work. Often, however, lawyers struggle to entice current clients to give them more work.
Bentham has developed a brief list of questions that lawyers can utilize to determine whether litigation funding can help them increase their client wallet share.
Law firms exploring strategic growth have a new financing option to consider. By securing funding against a portfolio of three or more commercial litigation cases on a partial contingency basis, firms gain access to capital provided by Bentham.
Whistleblower claims have been one of the few areas of litigation on the rise. With the clarifications in the recent Supreme Court decision in Universal Health Services v. Escobar, these claims are likely to continue to grow.
As the litigation finance industry continues its growth and expansion within the marketplace, so does the body of case law discussing whether communications made between a claimant and a funder are privileged.
Working with well-established litigation funders can have unexpected benefits for law firms. Among those benefits are opportunities to receive referrals for new business. In our experience, referral opportunities arise most commonly in the following situations...
In conclusion to this 4-part series, we look at how recent decisions protecting claimant-funder communications and work product indicate the judiciary’s growing acceptance of litigation funding.
In recent weeks, large law firms have announced significant increases in associate salaries. Not surprisingly, many clients are voicing concerns over any potential rises in billable rates as firms try to pass those costs onto clients. Long before the announcements, firms were already dealing with increasing pressure from clients shifting work in-house and asking for reduced rates, discounts, and alternative fee arrangements. As Allison Chock and Matt Harrison (the heads of our Los Angeles and San Francisco offices respectively) explain in our Q&A below, litigation funding provides a great way to address these issues and also create new value for clients.
In Part 3 of this 4-part series, we will look at the Florida Bankruptcy Court’s analysis and application of the Work Product Doctrine to a document production request in In re International Trading Company, LLC (“IOTC”).]
Recent surveys of corporate counsel demonstrate that they are looking for three important things from their outside advisors. When law firms don’t respond to these demands, they may lose out on litigation opportunities.
Working with well-established litigation funders can have unexpected benefits for law firms. Among those benefits are opportunities to receive referrals for new business.
