Got Funding?

by Rene Ciria-Cruz

Commercial litigators who need money to pursue a promising lawsuit can turn to a growing market: Two high-profile players have joined the ranks of litigation investors.

In the past, litigation financing has been offered by departments inside Credit Suisse and insurance firm Allianz. Now, two new start-ups?Juridica Capital Management and Juris Capital?are targeting the market.

"We only invest in business-to-business litigation, no class actions, usually only Fortune 500 companies," says Richard Fields, a corporate plaintiffs lawyer and CEO of Juridica, a New York arm of the U.K.'s Juridica Investments Ltd.

Founded in 2007, the Juridica fund has $200 million in capital. It invests an average of $7.5 million per case. "We do only cases already vetted by lawyers [and] experts that we hire for due diligence?and only cases that are already filed, are likely to settle, and not likely to go to trial," says Fields. For example, last year Juridica considered 122 cases but invested in only 17. Firms and clients looking for funding can directly approach Juridica, which doesn't actively seek out cases.

Chicago's Juris Capital won't say how much capital it has backing litigation, but it does disclose that its average investment per case is between $500,000 and $3 million. "My colleagues and I have been doing this informally for five years, but we set up Juris [in February]," notes attorney and Managing Director David Desser.

Juris focuses on commercial litigation, from early discovery to post-judgment and appeal. But like Juridica, the fund doesn't try to control any litigation it backs financially, and it chooses its cases carefully. "We only take 2 percent of [the cases] we look at," Desser estimates. "So long as we can tell it's a winner, it really doesn't matter to us if it's high profile, class action, goes to trial or to the Supreme Court, or settles."

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