Media & Publications
Incorporating Legal Claims
Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in commercial litigation funding. Whereas the judicial, legislative, and scholarly treatment of litigation finance has regarded litigation finance first and foremost as a form of champerty and sought to regulate it through rules of legal professional responsibility (hereinafter, the “legal ethics paradigm”), this Article suggests that the problems created by litigation finance are all facets of the classic problems created by “the separation of ownership and control” that have been a focus of business law since the advent of the corporate form.
How Much Is That Lawsuit in the Window? Pricing Legal Claims
Assessing the value of legal claims is the sixty-four thousand dollar question (no pun intended) of civil litigation.
Clients, as every litigator knows, often come into their attorneys' offices with a belief that they know how much their claim is worth. The attorney is then asked to validate that number.
Alternately, clients can come to their attorneys with a grievance-I have been injured, a counter-party breached its contract with me, I have been fired, our rainforest has been devastated by a mining company-and ask the attorney for an assessment of how much their grievance might be worth.
A Model Litigation Finance Contract
Litigation financing is nonrecourse funding of litigation by a non-party for a profit. It is a burgeoning and controversial phenomenon that has penetrated the United States in recent years.
Since “most of the important phenomena of modern litigation are best understood as results of changes in the financing and capitalization of the bar,” it is not surprising that litigation financing has been dubbed by RAND as one of the “biggest and most influential trends in civil justice” and by the Chamber of Commerce as “a clear and present danger to the impartial and efficient administration of civil justice in the United States.”
Whose claim is this anyway? third-party litigation funding
Imagine that a woman wants to bring a claim for sexual harassment against her powerful and wealthy former employer but can neither afford counsel nor find an attorney willing to take the case on contingency. A private funder provides the necessary financing for her to pursue her claim.
Further suppose that the employer in question is a former governor, now the sitting President of the United States, and that the investor is a wealthy supporter of the President's political opposition, and that the case starts a chain reaction that could have brought an end to the President's term in office.
Contingent Fees and Third Party Funding in Investment Arbitration Disputes
In this Special Mini-Edition of the Transnational Dispute Management Journal, co-editors Prof. Maya Steinitz and Joe Matthews have collected, edited and TDM now publishes original works by four authors who advance the critical analysis of issues raised by the increased presence of contingent fees and third party funding in connection with international investment disputes. TDM is also pleased to re-publish with permission an article authored by Prof. Steinitz in the Minnesota Law Review in January of this year entitled "Whose Claim is This Anyway? Third Party Litigation Funding."