Invest in the UK's legal sector

In a nutshell, litigation funding is when a third party invests in a claim by providing legal and associated fees in exchange for a share of the profit. The idea is that a good legal claim is an asset. It is worth money, but there’s risk. The value of the case can only be realised if you win in court. Traditionally the law prohibited a non-party from funding another party’s legal claim for a profit. These laws were known as ‘champerty’ and they date back to the Middle Ages in feudal England when unscrupulous lords would fund the claims of their underlings in order to harass one another. Over time, the practice of funding others’ legal claims for profit went the way of jousting and the plague, until 1993 when New South Wales in Australia rolled back its antiquated champerty laws. Lawmakers there wanted to allow outside interests to fund class actions, which were notoriously expensive. Sensing opportunity,  entrepreneurial investors started financing other cases in need of funding and taking a cut of the profits, and an industry was born. Since the early 90s litigation financing has become big business, particularly in the US and UK. Although investment in this relatively new asset class has been heavily dominated by institutional investors, Lending to Laywers has designed a product for a wider market of qualifying investors.