The 2020 Litigation Finance Survey Report

Since publishing our inaugural litigation finance survey in 2017, in partnership with Lake Whillans, each subsequent iteration has been a story of ever-increasing traction for the practice of third-party funding. Our 2020 findings continue this narrative, and show a marked increase in the scale and momentum of the field’s development and acceptance. Perhaps the most striking finding in this year’s survey was a nearly 30 percent year-to-year increase in the percentage of respondents reporting that they had firsthand experience with litigation finance.

Other findings include:

• Lawyers in every single industry we examined saw a significant uptick (at least 10 percent) in firsthand experience with litigation finance.
• Nearly 100 percent (99.36 percent) of respondents with firsthand experience with litigation finance agreed that they would use litigation finance again.
• The proportion of respondents who would not consider litigation finance has plummeted since the 2019 survey.
• Roughly three-quarters of our respondents stated that litigation finance has become more relevant to their practice in the last year.

We note that our survey data was collected before the COVID-19 crisis and the financial turmoil it has caused. These findings demonstrate that litigation finance is well poised to meet the challenges companies and law firms are now facing. Claim monetization, financing of claimholders, and capital for law firms are core offerings of a litigation financier like Lake Whillans, and are likely to become even more attractive solutions to many more companies and firms as we move through 2020 and beyond. We expect that next year’s survey results will show marked differences as litigation finance further penetrates every segment of the market driven by new necessities and creative problem solving.

Check out the full report on our survey findings here.