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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reshaping Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Reshaping Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Faculty Scholarship
Third-party funding is a controversial business arrangement whereby an outside entity—called a third-party funder—finances the legal representation of a party involved in litigation or arbitration or finances a law firm’s portfolio of cases in return for a profit. Attorney ethics regulations and other laws permit nonlawyers to become partial owners of law firms in the District of Columbia, England and Wales, Scotland, Australia, two provinces in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and other jurisdictions around the world. Recently, a U.S.-based third-party funder that is publicly traded in England started its own law firm in England. In addition, some U.S. …
Judging Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Judging Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Faculty Scholarship
Third-party funding is an arrangement whereby an outside entity finances the legal representation of a party involved in litigation or arbitration. The outside entity—called a “third-party funder”—could be a bank, hedge fund, insurance company, or some other entity or individual that finances the party’s legal representation in return for a profit. Third-party funding is a controversial, dynamic, and evolving phenomenon. The practice has attracted national headlines and the attention of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Advisory Committee). The Advisory Committee stated in a recent report that “judges currently have the power to obtain information about …
Recent Developments In Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Recent Developments In Third-Party Funding, Victoria Sahani
Faculty Scholarship
This article addresses recent developments in third-party funding that occurred during late 2012 and early 2013 in the three leading jurisdictions: Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The most important developments are the following. On 22 April 2013, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) issued regulatory guidelines clarifying the status of funders with respect to ASIC’s regulations and detailing how funders should manage conflicts of interest and handle certain provisions of their funding arrangements. In the United Kingdom, the Jackson Reforms took effect on 1 April 2013, bringing sweeping changes to the allowable fee agreements, discovery rules …
Whose Claim Is This Anyway? Third Party Litigation Funding, Maya Steinitz
Whose Claim Is This Anyway? Third Party Litigation Funding, Maya Steinitz
Faculty Scholarship
Third party litigation funding, or litigation finance, is a new industry composed of institutional investors who invest in litigation by providing finance in return for an ownership stake in a legal claim and a contingency in the recovery. Its emergence has been recognized as one of the most significant developments in civil litigation today. It will transform access to justice, and affect numerous areas of the law including corporate law, torts, intellectual property, environmental law, employment law and international law. Hailing from the U.K. and Australia, the practice is de facto prohibited in the U.S., largely through ethical rules disallowing …