As the full economic impact of COVID-19 reveals the true extent to which businesses have successfully weathered the storm or moved towards the cliff edge of failure, we await the wave of legal disputes that may follow.
With revenue and profitability battered in the past 15 months, tightening budgets and associated restrictions on legal spend may be just the boost that litigation funders need to further legitimize the role they can play in the future. Indeed, litigation funders’ growing influence can already be evidenced by the fact that 70% of the 54 class actions filed in the year ended 30 June 2019 were financed by a third party. Furthermore, RPC data has shown that assets held by the top 15 UK litigation funders had risen by 46% from £1.3 billion in 2017/18 to £1.9 billion in 2019/20.
To assess current perceptions of the funding market and gather views on how its future might play out, AlixPartners has collaborated with The Lawyer to survey private practice litigators, leading in-house lawyers, and barristers.
Our survey analyzes:
- The perceived benefits and drawbacks of litigation funding
- Typical use case scenarios for funding
- The future direction of the litigation funding market