Legal Funding Journal is dedicated to informing and engaging the global legal funding community through daily news, insight, analysis and original content.

The chairman of the American Trucking Associations has called on Congress to require disclosure of third-party litigation funding in civil cases, arguing that undisclosed outside financing distorts claims against motor carriers.

As reported by Transport Topics, the argument was set out by Greg Hodgen, chief executive of Groendyke Transport and chairman of the ATA, who described a system in which investors are "pouring money into civil litigation not to advance justice, but to maximize their own payouts."

Hodgen's case rests on the structure of the trucking industry itself. More than 90% of motor carriers operate 10 trucks or fewer, leaving the majority of the sector without the reserves to absorb prolonged litigation. Where a large carrier can weather an extended case, a small operator faces settlement pressure that has little to do with the merits of the claim.

The remedy he proposes stops short of prohibition. Hodgen urged passage of the Protecting Third Party Litigation Funding From Abuse Act, which would compel disclosure of outside financial interests in a case while leaving the practice of funding intact. That framing places the argument alongside a broader wave of transparency measures advancing in state legislatures and before federal rulemaking bodies, rather than with proposals seeking to restrict funding outright.

Industry advocates counter that funding enables claimants who could not otherwise pursue meritorious cases, and that mandatory disclosure risks exposing litigation strategy to better-resourced defendants. The disagreement over disclosure has become the central fault line in the regulatory debate, with both sides now largely conceding that funding itself is a permanent feature of the litigation landscape.

The trucking sector's continued prominence in that debate reflects its position as one of the most frequently litigated industries in the country.

Burford Capital has pulled back from the very largest commitments in its pipeline and cut roughly $10 million in annual compensation costs, as the funder recalibrates following the reversal of the YPF judgment earlier this year.

As reported by Non-Billable, the company reported a break-even second quarter, its first results since a $2.4 billion write-down in March tied to the appellate reversal of the $16 billion award against Argentina. The restructuring reduced management costs across a workforce of roughly 160 employees.

Chief Executive Chris Bogart characterized the changes as a deliberate narrowing rather than a retreat, telling the publication the firm had "somewhat reduced our willingness to take on some very large, but only moderately profitable deals." He described the compensation restructuring as "a one-off" rather than the beginning of repeated reductions.

The shift points toward a portfolio weighted less heavily to single outsized positions. Concentration risk has been the recurring critique of Burford's model, and the YPF reversal supplied the clearest illustration yet of how one matter can move a balance sheet. Screening for profitability rather than headline size addresses that exposure directly, though it also constrains the upside that made such positions attractive.

At the same time, Burford is examining investment in law firms seeking outside capital, an area opening up as alternative business structures and managed services organizations give firms routes to external investment that were previously unavailable. The funder has continued to deploy capital elsewhere, including a £5 billion UK class action against Google.

For a sector that has spent the year absorbing the consequences of the YPF reversal, Burford's positioning offers an early signal of how the largest players intend to balance scale against risk.

Traditionally defense-oriented large law firms are increasingly taking on plaintiff-side engagements for their corporate clients, with litigation funders providing both the capital and an independent assessment of which claims merit pursuit.

As reported by Original Jurisdiction, the shift was the subject of a Burford Capital panel discussion examining how the historical division between plaintiff-side and defense-side practice has continued to erode. Corporate clients, panelists observed, have come to treat affirmative litigation as a balance sheet item rather than a cost center.

The reframing is straightforward: as one panelist put it, "if you have a meritorious legal claim, that is an asset" — one that can generate value for shareholders instead of sitting unused. Recognizing claims that way, however, requires firms built around hourly billing to absorb risk they have not historically carried.

That is where funders enter. By financing plaintiff-side matters, funders allow firms to pursue contingency work without exposing their own economics to a single outcome. Panelists also described the diligence funders perform as valuable in its own right, characterizing a funding commitment as "a vote of approval" on the strength of a claim.

The transition demands a change in orientation as much as in economics. Lawyers accustomed to defending must, in the words of one participant, "stop playing defense" and play offense, while managing budgets against work that generates no continuous hourly revenue. Larger corporate clients, meanwhile, are weighing potential recovery against the commercial relationships a claim may disturb, and selecting counsel accordingly.

Whether a successful party can recover its third-party funding costs in a Singapore-seated arbitration remains unsettled and turns substantially on how the funding agreement itself is structured, according to new practitioner guidance.

As reported by Pinsent Masons, recoverability is determined by tribunals on a case-by-case basis, with no settled rule compelling or barring an award of funding costs. The threshold for challenging a tribunal's costs determination in court is correspondingly high, reflecting Singapore's minimal-intervention approach to arbitral awards.

The analysis points to the Singapore International Commercial Court's decision in *DTH v DTF*, in which the court declined to disturb a tribunal's refusal to award funding costs alongside legal costs on an award of approximately $14.73 million. The SICC observed that it was "difficult to see how such a determination could be said to shock the conscience," signaling how little room parties have to relitigate costs allocation after the fact.

Drafting is where the guidance places the emphasis. Funding agreements must satisfy the requirements of section 5B of Singapore's Civil Law Act, and arrangements framed as commercial investments in the outcome rather than as funding for the costs of proceedings risk falling foul of the maintenance and champerty rules that section 5B carves out.

The practical implication for funders and funded parties is that the recoverability question is largely settled at the point of contracting, not at the costs stage. The guidance also notes the divergence between Singapore-seated arbitration and SICC proceedings, where recovery of funding costs remains prohibited outright.

New Jersey's Appellate Division has affirmed the enforceability of a Legal-Bay LLC funding agreement in *Viglianti v. Blue*, rejecting a plaintiff's argument that state insurance and lien statutes invalidated his obligation to repay the funder after his personal injury case settled.

According to PR Newswire, the underlying dispute arose after the plaintiff exhausted his automobile Personal Injury Protection benefits following a motor vehicle accident but still required spinal fusion surgery. Legal-Bay advanced $90,000 directly to his medical providers, allowing the procedure to proceed while his claim against the defendant remained pending.

After the case settled, the plaintiff challenged Legal-Bay's right to repayment, contending that New Jersey statutes governing PIP reimbursement and physician liens operated to void the funding agreement. Both the trial court and the Appellate Division disagreed. The appellate panel found that the cited statutes did not "invalidate or limit the agreement," characterizing it instead as a private contract voluntarily entered into by the plaintiff after consultation with counsel.

The decision is notable for the distinction it draws between statutory schemes regulating insurers and medical providers on one hand, and privately negotiated funding arrangements on the other. Rather than reading the PIP framework as occupying the field, the court treated the funding agreement as a separate contractual undertaking that the plaintiff was free to make.

For the consumer legal funding sector, the ruling supplies appellate-level support for medical funding structures in a state where the treatment of such arrangements has drawn recurring scrutiny. It also underscores the role documented consent and independent legal advice play when funders defend agreements against later statutory attack.

Counsel Financial has published its Summer 2026 Litigation Finance Bi-Annual Report, documenting 14 transactions representing approximately $464 million in committed capital and more than $2 billion in underwritten case collateral over the reporting period.

According to Newswire, the report covers transactions the firm originated, underwrote, serviced, or monitored across mass torts, class actions, single-event personal injury, complex litigation, and specialty litigation portfolios. Capital came from eight alternative asset managers, three commercial banks, and additional specialty finance participants.

Mass torts accounted for 46% of collateral composition and class actions 30%, while alternative asset managers supplied 74% of capital provider participation. Featured transactions include a $110 million multi-participant delayed draw facility funded by a specialty finance firm alongside an alternative asset manager, and a $35 million commercial bank revolving facility.

The report frames the period as one in which two distinct pools of capital operated side by side in contingent-fee litigation. "Bank capital and fund capital are both active in this space right now, and they come in with different mandates, different diligence requirements, and different reporting expectations," said Nicholas D'Aquilla, President of Counsel Financial. "What this period showed us is that both need the same underlying capability. Someone must underwrite the collateral, monitor it, and report on it to an institutional standard. That is the role we play across the market, regardless of who is funding the transaction."

Counsel Financial has deployed more than $2 billion over 25 years of lending to plaintiffs' firms. The bi-annual disclosure offers an uncommon window into how institutional capital is being structured around contingent-fee portfolios, and into the underwriting and reporting infrastructure that banks and funds alike now expect from the asset class.

Aavalynx, a legal AI platform for analyzing litigation portfolios and dispute economics, has raised £1.5 million in pre-seed funding to help companies cut legal spend and make earlier, data-driven decisions about their disputes.

As reported by Tech.eu, the round was led by European firm Omega Ventures, with participation from West Coast-based Two Ravens and angel investors including senior law firm partners and a former head of Amazon Europe. Founded in 2023 and commercially live since 2024, the company counts Vodafone among its co-development partners.

The platform functions as a central repository that structures and interrogates dispute data at scale, giving organizations the visibility to intervene earlier and shift from reactive to proactive litigation management. Founder and CEO Hanna Roos — who spent nearly two decades in disputes at Freshfields, Latham & Watkins, and Quinn Emanuel — said early results show roughly 30x return on investment in saved damages and legal fees, rising to 200x when rescued commercial opportunities are included. "Good tools make disputes efficient, but great ones make them disappear," she said.

For the litigation finance community, tools that quantify and de-risk dispute portfolios sit close to home. As funders and corporates increasingly treat litigation as an asset class, data-driven portfolio analysis of the kind Aavalynx offers could sharpen how claims are valued, selected, and managed.