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An LFJ Conversation with Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot

By John Freund |
June 5, 2024

An LFJ Conversation with Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot brings extensive expertise in compliance, risk management, and regulatory affairs. As the Managing Member of The Law Offices of Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, P.C., she ensures SEC-regulated entities adhere to compliance standards. With ties to FINRA and previous positions at the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, she has been listed among The Hedge Fund Journal’s Top 50 Women in Hedge Funds.

Hedonova, established in 2020, specializes in alternative investments, encompassing a diverse range of assets such as startups, real estate, fine art, carbon credits, and more. Hedonova offers a single fund structure that allows shareholders to invest without the burden of managing the day-to-day distribution of their investments. Hedonova’s mission is to make alternative investments accessible to all.

Below is our LFJ Conversation with Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot:

1. Hedonova has a unique business model. Can you explain how the fund works?

Certainly, the Hedonova fund operates on a single fund structure, which means that instead of offering multiple funds with different risk profiles, we consolidate various alternative investments into one accessible option for investors. This simplifies decision-making for our clients, as they don’t have to navigate multiple investment choices. Within this single fund, we strategically diversify across different asset classes, such as startups, real estate, art, litigation finance, and more. By spreading investments across diverse assets, we aim to manage risk effectively and potentially enhance returns for our investors.

2. How do you make it possible for investors worldwide to access alternative investments?

We prioritize global access to alternative investments through several means. Firstly, we leverage user-friendly online platforms, making it easy for investors worldwide to explore and invest in our fund. Hedonova has established and operates four feeder funds within its international framework across various jurisdictions, each meticulously structured under the relevant local laws. Additionally, we establish strategic partnerships with financial institutions across different regions, enabling us to reach a wider audience. Through these partnerships, we ensure that investors from various parts of the world can seamlessly participate in our fund, tapping into the opportunities offered by alternative investments. 

3. How are you adapting your business to the new regulatory requirements of the SEC’s Private Adviser Rule?

Adapting to the new regulatory requirements of the SEC’s Private Adviser Rule is a key focus for us. We’re enhancing our compliance measures and transparency practices to align with the regulatory framework. This involves thorough reviews of our operations and investment processes to ensure compliance. Additionally, we’re strengthening our communication channels with investors, providing them with clear and transparent information about our fund and its compliance with regulatory requirements. We aim to maintain trust and confidence in our operations by prioritizing investor protection and regulatory compliance.

4. Are there unique challenges in the Litigation Funding space for Hedonova?

Yes, the Litigation Funding space presents its own set of unique challenges. One significant challenge is assessing the financial viability of litigation cases. We carefully evaluate factors such as potential costs associated with litigation, the likelihood of successful resolution, and the estimated timeline for outcomes. Maintaining transparent communication with all parties involved, including law firms and plaintiffs, is crucial. We navigate these challenges by implementing rigorous evaluation processes and fostering open dialogue with our partners, ensuring alignment of interests and effective management of risks.

5. What are the advantages for investors in litigation finance?

Investors stand to gain several advantages from investing in litigation finance. Firstly, it offers the potential for high returns, as successful litigation cases can result in significant settlements or awards. Additionally, litigation finance typically involves shorter investment horizons than traditional investments, allowing investors to realize returns within a shorter timeframe. Moreover, litigation finance often exhibits a low correlation with traditional markets, providing diversification benefits to investors. By incorporating litigation finance into their portfolios, investors can access alternative sources of income and enhance overall portfolio resilience.

6. What are the types of litigation finance cases that Hedonova has invested in?

Hedonova has invested in various types of litigation cases across different sectors. These include commercial lawsuits, intellectual property disputes, class action lawsuits, and more. Each case undergoes a thorough evaluation process, where we assess its financial viability, the strength of legal arguments, and the expertise of the legal team involved. By diversifying across different litigation cases, we aim to spread risk and maximize potential returns for our investors.

7. How can investors use litigation finance to diversify their portfolios?

Investors can utilize litigation finance to diversify their portfolios by capitalizing on its non-correlation with traditional assets, as returns from legal cases are often unaffected by economic fluctuations. Diversification within the litigation finance asset class itself spreads risk across various cases with different risk profiles, mitigating the impact of any single case’s outcome. With the potential for high returns and exposure to alternative assets beyond stocks and bonds, litigation finance offers a unique avenue for portfolio diversification. Additionally, investors gain access to specialized legal expertise and thorough due diligence processes conducted by litigation finance firms, enhancing their investment decisions. As the litigation finance industry matures, it presents opportunities for long-term growth, making it an attractive option for investors seeking to broaden their investment horizons.

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John Freund

John Freund

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An LFJ Conversation with Kris Altiere, US Head of Marketing, Moneypenny

By John Freund |
Kris Altiere is the US Head of Marketing at Moneypenny, the leading provider of customer conversation solutions for the legal sector. With more than 20 years of experience in marketing and brand development, she is an award-winning strategist who helps law firms and legal service providers enhance client experience, strengthen reputation, and drive growth.  Kris is passionate about blending creativity with data-driven insight, ensuring attorneys and their teams benefit from smarter, more efficient ways to connect with clients while maintaining the highest standards of professionalism. Below is our LFJ Conversation with Kris: Litigation funders and firms are under pressure to respond instantly to client inquiries. From your perspective, how can they meet these expectations without overburdening staff or creating burnout? Across both funding companies and law firms, clients expect clear, informed answers almost immediately. The solution isn’t to expect internal staff to be ‘always on’, that leads to fatigue and errors. Instead, the answer lies in building an intake structure that blends smart technology and AI with flexible human support. At Moneypenny, we see huge success when firms use tools like intelligent call routing or secure live chat to capture every inquiry, triage urgency, and pass only relevant conversations to specialists. By combining in-house capability with trusted outsourced teams, organizations maintain round-the-clock responsiveness without compromising staff wellbeing. Moneypenny’s model offers outsourced communication support. What role can outsourcing play in ensuring consistent, high-quality client interactions, and how do you balance personalization with scalability? Outsourced communication support should never feel outsourced. The best providers act as a seamless extension of your team. At Moneypenny, our receptionists are trained to represent the companies brand, understand escalation paths, and client sensitivities, so every caller feels known and valued. This hybrid model means law firms and funders alike can deliver a highly personalized experience, while still having the scalability to absorb surges in demand. That balance is what protects reputation in high-stakes, time-sensitive matters. What best practices have you seen for maintaining responsiveness while also protecting the wellbeing of in-house teams—especially in high-stakes, time-sensitive legal funding matters? 
  • Define clear service levels: agree internally which inquiries require immediate attention and which can wait.
  • Use shared dashboards and call logs so tasks are visible and distributed fairly.
  • Rotate responsibilities for after-hours or urgent coverage and protect genuine downtime.
  • Partner with specialists like Moneypenny for overflow support during campaigns, press interest, or large case volumes.
  • Celebrate client praise so people see the impact of their professionalism, reframing responsiveness as value, not just pressure.
As the litigation funding market becomes more competitive, pricing alone no longer sets players apart. How important is the client journey—from first inquiry through to resolution—in shaping brand reputation? As competition intensifies, fees alone won’t win loyalty. Clients are looking for reassurance and transparency from the very first call through to resolution. Whether it’s a funder evaluating a claim or an attorney guiding a litigant, the speed, clarity, and empathy of your communications define how your brand is perceived. At Moneypenny, we’ve seen firms use exceptional communication to build loyalty, generate referrals, and justify premium pricing, because a smooth, human-led journey builds trust that competitors can’t easily replicate. Many funders struggle to align their communications, marketing, and operations. What practical steps would you recommend to ensure a seamless and empathetic experience across every touchpoint? To align marketing, communications, and operations:
  1. Map the lifecycle for funded matters and legal cases, capturing every stage from inquiry to closure.
  2. Set a consistent tone and language so outreach, intake, and case updates are aligned.
  3. Adopt shared technology (CRM, case management, call notes) to prevent siloed touchpoints.
  4. Monitor & refine: listen to sample calls, gather client feedback, and adjust scripts or processes to stay aligned with brand values.
Moneypenny partners with firms at each of these steps, ensuring consistency across touchpoints and allowing legal teams to focus on the matters that really need their expertise.  
LFJ Conversation

An LFJ Conversation with Ankita Mehta, Co-founder, Lexity.ai

By John Freund |
Ankita Mehta is the co-founder of Lexity.ai, a platform that accelerates deal execution. It enables leading litigation funds to vet 3x more opportunities and expand capacity with a plug-and-play AI-powered solution tailored to how funders operate. A seasoned entrepreneur, Ankita has built and scaled technology-driven businesses to multi-million-dollar revenues across nine countries. She brings deep expertise in bridging technology with business outcomes, with a sharp focus on adoption, measurable impact, and scaling innovation in high-stakes industries. Below is our LFJ Conversation with Ankita: While AI is increasingly common in legal practice, litigation funders have been slower to adopt it. From your vantage point, what makes funders uniquely positioned to benefit from AI right now? For funders, time is capital. Every extra week in case assessment means idle capital and lost deals.  AI inverts that dynamic, trimming assessment cycles by up to 70% and standardizing evaluation criteria. This allows investment teams to vet 3-4x more opportunities with their existing headcount, directly increasing capital deployment velocity. Unlike law firms, funders don’t bill hours - they monetize disciplined throughput and risk pricing. That’s why AI isn’t peripheral here; it’s a direct lever on ROI. In a market growing quickly and attracting more competition, speed and consistency aren’t just efficiency gains - they’re competitive advantages. Larger funds are using AI to handle more deals, while new funds can build scalable systems from day one. How do you see these two paths diverging—and what does that mean for competition and efficiency in the funding market? These two paths- larger funds integrating AI into existing operations versus new funds building AI-native systems from the outset, likely lead to a more stratified and competitive funding market, ultimately driving greater efficiency across the board. Big funds are bolting AI into legacy workflows. Gains are incremental but powerful: less manual grind, faster diligence, more disciplined portfolio monitoring. Their primary advantage lies on their established market presence, larger capital pools, and existing deal flow. AI will help them process their high volume of cases more efficiently and potentially expand their capacity without a proportional increase in headcount. New funds, by contrast, have a distinct advantage-they are now able to be AI-native from day one: lean teams, tech-driven, scalable assessment without additional overhead. Their challenge will be establishing a track record and building trust in the market, but their AI-native approach will give them a significant edge in speed and cost-efficiency. The divergence will lead to increased market share: incumbents defend market share with volume and more precise investment decisions, leveraging AI, while challengers will disrupt with velocity, lower overheads and faster decision-making cycles. What’s clear is that “manual first” funds will be squeezed from both sides, leading to consolidation in the market or decline in profitability with less technologically advanced firms. In essence, AI acts as an accelerator - faster deal cycles, sharper risk calls, healthier portfolios, pushing the whole market toward higher efficiency and eventually, increased access to justice. In your experience, which areas of deal assessment, diligence, or monitoring are already seeing measurable efficiency gains from AI integration, and which areas are still more hype than reality? In our work with litigation funders, we see a clear and effective division of labor emerging. AI is delivering transformative efficiency in the early, data-intensive stages of deal assessment and diligence, while the core strategic decisions and the art of funding remain firmly in the hands of expert funders. Where AI Is Delivering Measurable Gains Now:
  • Intake & Triage: Instantly extracting and structuring key data like parties, claims, and timelines from initial documents.
  • Diligence Support: Automating timeline creation, document clustering, and red-flag analysis in minutes, not days.
  • Portfolio Monitoring: Delivering automated docket alerts and portfolio-wide signals without consuming analyst hours.
Where Expert Judgment Remains Paramount:
  • Predicting Final Outcomes: No algorithm can accurately price in the nuance of judicial temperament, witness credibility, or complex negotiation dynamics. AI can surface the data, but the final risk assessment is a human judgment call.
  • Automating Core Legal Strategy: The core elements of persuasion and legal argument require a human touch. AI serves as a powerful tool for the strategist, not a replacement of the strategist.
In short, AI is proving invaluable for automating the routine, data-intensive tasks that precede an investment decision. This frees up funders to focus their expertise on the strategic, judgment-heavy calls where they create the most value. Lexity is not a fund, but you work directly with funders to process more opportunities consistently. Can you share a concrete example of how Lexity has improved throughput or accuracy for a fund without requiring additional headcount One fund put it simply: “95% of an investment manager’s day is reviewing cases we’ll never fund. Can Lexity solve that?” Lexity’s ClickflowsTM do exactly that. In practice, analysts upload documents, and within minutes Lexity outputs structured summaries: parties, jurisdictions, claims, damages, timelines, and red flags. The impact for their team was immediate: Review times were cut by 70%, from hours to minutes. As a result, they can now vet 3-4x more cases with the same team, applying consistent criteria to every opportunity. This increased capacity significantly for the fund. Instead, their existing team could focus on the 5% of cases that truly mattered. That’s technology acting as a force multiplier. Litigation funders often ask about tangible returns before adopting new tools. What real-world ROI have you seen from funds already using Lexity’s platform, whether in terms of faster decision cycles, better risk assessment, or portfolio monitoring? The ROI from integrating AI is immediate and manifests in several key areas of the funding operation:
  • Accelerated Decision Cycles: The 'time to a yes/no' is a critical metric. We've seen funds cut this down by weeks, allowing them to pursue more opportunities and deploy capital faster.
  • Early Loss Prevention: The system automatically flags fatal flaws like expired statutes of limitation or critical missing documents during intake. This saves enormous costs in wasted diligence and external counsel fees on deals that were never viable.
  • Increased Operational Leverage: Funds can significantly increase their deal vetting capacity without a proportional increase in headcount or overhead costs.
Ultimately, the goal is to use an outcome-focused, plug-and-play solution that’s so simple and intuitive, users don’t even realize they’re working with AI. Lexity delivers funder-focused automation that is structured, auditable, and tied to outcomes. It is a practical capacity expansion that makes funders faster, sharper allocators of capital. In litigation finance, that is the difference between keeping pace and leading.
LFJ Conversation

An LFJ Conversation with Elena Rey, Partner, Brown Rudnick

By John Freund |
Elena Rey heads the firm’s Litigation Funding group and is a co-head of the European Special Situations team. Elena represents funders, private equity funds, family offices, law firms and claimants on complex cross border litigation funding, investment & special situations transactions, and is recognised by The Legal 500 as a leader in the litigation funding space. Elena is a founder of the Firm’s annual European Litigation Funding conference held in London, as well as the Litigation Funding industry working group, which was created with the aim of preparing model documentation for the litigation funding market. Elena is also a co-author of the Loan Market Association book on real estate finance. Elena is admitted to practice in England & Wales. She holds a master's degree from Harvard Law School and is fluent in French and Russian. Below is our LFJ Conversation with Elena Rey: What was the driving vision behind launching the European Litigation Funding Conference, and how does this year’s agenda reflect the most pressing issues for funders and practitioners in 2025?  At the time there was no forum in Europe for funders and those connected to the litigation funding industry to come together and share ideas. Given our relationships and experienceon both sides of the Atlantic, it felt like a natural step for Brown Rudnick to launch a European conference dedicated to this nascent but growing industry. Our conference is an opportunity to bring together leading players across the litigation funding industry from around the world to discuss trends and developments in different jurisdictions, focus on deals in this space and their origination as well as share knowledge and develop networks. As an advisor to investors, funders and claimants on all matters litigation funding related, we have reflected the issues, opportunities, trends and strategies that we see day to day in the panels. From your perspective, what are the most significant developments in litigation funding across the UK and continental Europe over the past year, and how are those shaping the conversations you expect at the conference?  In the UK,  funders have had to contend with PACCAR and the risk of that decision to historic funding agreements. However, it is anticipated that the CJC recommendations will pave the way for a fix to be enacted that will provide reassurance and certainty for users of funding as well as funders themselves,  which has been lacking and an unnecessary distraction for an industry that is still nascent. Continental Europe is discovering the benefits of funding, slowly but surely, and there is a lot of focus on countries such as Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and the Nordics. There are several promising developments in jurisdictions including in Spain which is looking to introduce opt out collective redress regime for consumers that won’t be possible without funding.  We are also continuing to see strong demand for funding in the Netherlands where the regime is more established. Regulatory reform continues to be a key topic in the sector—how will the conference address differing approaches in the UK, EU, and U.S., and what takeaways do you hope attendees will gain from that dialogue? We have thought leaders from the UK, EU and US who will be sharing their insights on the regulatory developments and potential headwinds facing funders, investors, law firms and claimants who are also impacted. The industry is evolving, and our conference has been successful because attendees gain fresh insights and perspectives from their peers and users of funding as well as investors. The panel discussions cover a broad range of topics. Which are you most excited about, and why?  This is an impossible question to answer for me and it’s our fantastic panelists that make the sessions compelling and very relevant every year. Panels on Group Actions, Law Firm Funding, and European Developments address the key structures and legal issues that are central to the industry and to advancing funded cases. The Private Credit Panel is also consistently one of the most engaging, given the strong interest we are seeing from private equity and distressed debt funds, family offices, and other sources of capital. It is particularly valuable to hear how multi-strategy investment funds view the litigation funding space and how they weigh its risk and return profile against other alternative asset classes Each year we try to include a more light-hearted panel. Last year it focused on the funding of cryptocurrency cases. This year we’ve added a panel called “Trouble” — looking at what happens when a hostile action is taken by one of the parties to a funding arrangement, when a dispute arises, or when some other unusual challenge puts both the funder’s experience and the robustness of the funding documentation to the test. Several recent high-profile deals that went through restructurings have brought these issues into the spotlight, so I expect this will be a particularly engaging panel For many attendees, conferences are as much about relationships as content. What unique opportunities will this event offer for funders, lawyers, and investors to connect and potentially initiate deals? It’s rare for a conference to bring together industry leaders from around the worldconsistently,  and that is the secret of this conference’s success and what is has a strong reputation for. Funders, investors and users of funding know this and that is why they attend, so yes, I expect a lot of deals will be originated at the conference. And because we are not a commercial conference organisation, we are completely focused on the quality of our content and all of our panels are carefully curated to tackle important subjects and panelists are invited because they have something important and relevant to say on that topic. We expect that like in previous years, it will be a standing room only event. -- Click here for more information on the European Litigation Funding Conference 2025.  The event will take place on Thursday, October 9th, and panel discussions will include: 1. State of the Market and Managing Regulatory Uncertainty 2. Private Credit Investment Interest in Litigation Funding 3. Portfolio Diversification and Law Firm Funding Strategies, Risks and Returns 4. Co-funding and Secondary Syndication Strategies 5. Group Actions Landscape - Recent and Upcoming Decisions that Impact Funding 6. Developments in the European Litigation Funding Market 7. Trouble - What Happens When Things Go Wrong & Value Loss Mitigation