Jan/Feb 2018 Funding News Roundup

The Headlines

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Uber Newsroom: an Update on insurance

A press release, but interesting nonetheless, James River Insurance and Progressive join Farmer’s and Allstate as providers to all rides, “Every Uber driver-partner is covered while online; from the moment a driver turns on the app to wait for a trip request, while driving to pick up a rider, and until the trip ends. There is also protection for riders during an Uber trip.”

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Taste the Soup! Innovation is Hiding in Plain Sight in The Legal Profession

This Above the Law article studies litigation finance, alternative dispute resolution, and online dispute resolution as areas of innovation. As to the first,  , “Taste the Soup!”discusses a number benefits of the legal funding industry of which we’re all aware of: enfranchisement for underfunded plaintiffs, , mitigation of risks for well-funded businesses and people,  facilitation of global recourse, and access for litigants to the best and most appropriate lawyers and firms.

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What’s The Similarity Between Catastrophe Bonds And Litigation Finance?

No surprises here, the answer is: “they are both non-correlated investments.” Nonetheless, an interesting analogy and also a few bold prediction, such as that investors will continue to pour money into the industry, profits will compress with new entrants, and pressure will increase for law firms to be publicly traded.

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Judges keep shielding litigation funding agreements, despite demands for transparency

The Chevron disclosure notwithstanding, this article gives a rundown of the commonly-tried  but rarely-won attempts to legally compel disclosure of funding agreements. Readers learn, among other things, that one of the reasons this effort is so difficult is that agreements are protected by the work-product privilege, citing a variety of cases, as well as the NYU Journal of Law and Business paper “Alternative Litigation Finance and the Limits of the Work-Product Doctrine” as support.

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Odds and Ends

Litigation Funding: 5 Things to Watch for in 2018

Therium Group Holdings Completes First Close of £300M Litigation Finance Fund

Litigation Finance Outfit Lake Whillans Raises $125M Fund

Burford Says It Poured $1.3B Into Legal Market in 2017

Backing both David and Goliath: how litigation funding is changing