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An LFJ Conversation with Stephen Kyriacou, Head of Litigation and Contingent Risk at WTW

By John Freund |
April 29, 2025

An LFJ Conversation with Stephen Kyriacou, Head of Litigation and Contingent Risk at WTW

Stephen is a seasoned litigation and contingent risk insurance broker and former practicing complex commercial litigator who joined WTW in February 2025 as Head of Litigation and Contingent Risk Insurance.  In his role, Stephen evaluates litigation-related risks and structures bespoke litigation and contingent risk insurance policies for litigation finance, hedge fund, law firm, private equity, and corporate clients.  Prior to joining WTW, Stephen was a Managing Director and Senior Lawyer in Aon’s Litigation Risk Group.  Stephen joined Aon in 2019, and was the first insurance industry professional dedicated solely to the litigation and contingent risk insurance market, leading the Litigation Risk Group’s origination and business development work, in-house legal diligence, efforts to advocate for coverage with underwriters, and negotiation and structuring of insurance policies.  During his time at Aon, Stephen was a three-time Risk and Insurance Magazine “Power Broker” (2022, 2023, 2024); spearheaded the development of judgment preservation insurance and insurance-backed judgment monetization as well as the synergy of litigation and contingent risk insurance with litigation finance; and was responsible for placing billions of dollars in total coverage limits – including the largest ever litigation and contingent risk insurance policy, and several policies that each provided over $500 million in coverage limits – and delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in premium to insurers.  Stephen additionally provided consulting and broking services on litigation-driven, insurance capital-based investment opportunities and sales of litigation claims, insurance claims, and subrogation rights as part of the Aon Special Opportunities Group. Prior to joining the insurance industry, Stephen was a complex commercial litigator in the New York City office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner from 2011 to 2019.  While at BSF, Stephen amassed significant trial, appellate, and arbitration experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in the U.S. and abroad across a wide array of practice areas, including securities, antitrust, constitutional, insurance, first amendment, employment, government contracting, and criminal law, as well as in multidistrict and class action litigation.  Stephen’s clients included banks and other major financial institutions, private equity firms, technology companies, foreign sovereigns, professional sports teams, television networks, insurance companies, corporate executives, and other high-net-worth individuals.   Stephen earned his J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 2010, and is a member of the New York State Bar.  He also clerked for the Honorable Tanya S. Chutkan in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Below is our LFJ Conversation with Stephen Kyriacou:

We’ve seen increased interest in portfolio-based insurance solutions, particularly as the judgment preservation market has tightened.  What’s driving this shift, and how are clients adjusting their risk strategies in response?

When I first joined the insurance industry back in 2019, after about a decade as a trial and appellate lawyer at Boies Schiller, we were primarily insuring single-case defense-side risks with what we now call adverse judgment insurance or “AJI” policies.  Shortly after I started, the focus shifted to the plaintiff side, though most insurers still preferred insuring single cases with what came to be called judgment preservation insurance or “JPI” policies.  These policies protected plaintiffs who had already won at trial or on summary judgment against appellate risk, effectively guaranteeing a minimum recovery from their trial court judgments no matter what happened on appeal.

JPI was the driving force behind the explosive growth in the litigation and contingent risk insurance market for several years, in large part because these policies allowed plaintiffs to monetize judgments more cost-effectively than they could without insurance.  And as the market grew, so did the size of the judgments that were being insured and the amount of coverage limits that insurers were putting up, both individually and collectively, on these policies.  It got to the point where policies providing over $100 million in coverage for multi-hundred-million-dollar judgments became commonplace, and several policies were written that provided more than $500 million in coverage on billion-dollar-plus judgments.  Individual insurers were also sometimes betting tens of millions of dollars on the outcome of a single case as part of some of these JPI larger policies.

Unfortunately, while more modestly sized JPI policies on smaller judgments have generally performed as expected, with insurers not having to pay many claims, some of these larger, more high-profile JPI policies have run into significant challenges on appeal, on remand, and in places like the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.  And the nature of this insurance is such that one big loss on a multi-hundred-million-dollar policy can more than wipe out the premium gains for insurers on several smaller policies.

The JPI losses that insurers have already incurred, and those they look likely to incur in the near term, have understandably caused many of them to reassess their approach to litigation and contingent risk insurance more broadly.  For some insurers, that has meant pulling back from the space or taking a “back to basics” approach and returning to a focus on defense-side risk.  But for many insurers, it has meant mirroring the pivot that much of the litigation finance industry made several years ago away from single cases – where financial outcomes can hinge entirely on one jury, one trial court judge, or one panel of appellate court judges – and toward a portfolio-focused approach that better spreads risk across multiple diverse cases or litigation-related investments, loans, or other assets.  In fact, the insurers who have come into the market following the JPI boom, and who therefore have no exposure to any of the large JPI policies of recent years, are generally focused, at least for the time being, exclusively on providing this sort of portfolio-based coverage.

Our clients at WTW are embracing this new paradigm.  Where a client may previously have sought to insure a single large patent infringement judgment with a similarly large JPI policy, they might now seek a portfolio-based policy that guarantees a minimum recovery from the combination of that judgment, several other earlier-stage cases that are pending in different trial courts, and numerous other patents they may seek to enforce through litigation in the future.  We’re also working with litigation funders who may previously have sought to insure individual investments on a piecemeal basis once they reached the judgment stage to instead insure portfolios of diversified investments throughout all stages of the litigation lifecycle, including in some cases entire funds or designated sleeves of funds.  Patent and mass tort case aggregators are also increasingly looking to avail themselves of portfolio-based insurance solutions that can be tailored to the unique risk profiles of their businesses and used as a financial tool to spur growth and increase profitability.

Law firms are getting in on the action, as well.  We are seeing tremendous interest in “work-in-progress” or “WIP” wrappers that insure, on a cross-collateralized basis, a law firm’s anticipated contingency fee recovery across a portfolio of cases.  Many of the recent WIP insurance placements that we’ve worked on recently have involved patent infringement cases and IP litigation boutiques, but we are also seeing interest from mass tort, personal injury, and product liability law firms, as well as among AmLaw 200 firms that focus on many different categories of high-value, capital- and labor-intensive plaintiff-side commercial litigation.

Can you walk us through what a portfolio-based insurance wrapper actually looks like – both for a litigation funder and for a law firm? How do the structures differ, and what risks are typically covered?

The basic structure of a portfolio-based insurance wrapper is very straightforward.  Essentially, an insured purchases a policy with a specific amount of coverage limits that guarantees the insured will recover an amount equivalent to those coverage limits from the cases or litigation-related investments, loans, or other assets that comprise the portfolio that’s being insured.  If, at the end of the policy term – or if the policy doesn’t have a specific term, once the last of the covered cases or investments has ended – the insured’s recovery is less than the limits on the policy, the insurers will pay out a “loss” on the policy that effectively trues the insured up to policy limits.

Recovery against the policy limits is measured differently depending on who the insured is:  for litigants insuring pools of plaintiff-side litigation, insurers look to any amounts the litigant earns through damage awards and settlements on those cases; for litigation funders, hedge funds, or others insuring investments in litigation-related assets, insurers look to their returns on those investments; for lenders insuring loans to law firms or other participants in the plaintiff-side litigation ecosystem, insurers look to the amount of principal plus interest repaid on those loans; and for law firms insuring their work-in-process or “WIP”  on a group of cases, insurers look to the contingency fees that the law firm collects on those cases.

For a litigation funder, it’s as simple as identifying a set of investments, loans, or other assets to go into the portfolio, identifying the amount the funder has invested in whatever it is that collateralizes the portfolio, and then insuring a minimum recovery that is some significant percentage of the funder’s overall investment.  And as I mentioned earlier, these policies can insure an entire fund, a designated portion of a fund, a specific LP within a fund, or even a more bespoke portfolio comprised of select investments from within a given fund or from a cross-section of different funds.

As with portfolio policies for litigation funders, WIP policies can be placed on a programmatic basis across a firm’s entire contingency fee case book or on a more selective basis across certain specifically identified cases.  Here’s an example of how a WIP policy might work:  Imagine that a law firm was litigating ten cases on contingency, with an anticipated recovery of more than $100 million in contingency fees and expected WIP of $50 million across the portfolio of cases.  The firm could potentially purchase a WIP policy with a $40 million limit, equal to 80% of its expected WIP, which would provide coverage if, over what is typically a five- to seven-year policy term, the ten cases in the portfolio collectively earn the firm less than $40 million in total contingency fees.  If, at the end of the policy term, the firm had only recovered $20 million in total contingency fees, the policy would cover the $20 million shortfall against the $40 million in policy limits.

WIP policies are often used as a mechanism to attract litigation funding at a much lower cost of capital than otherwise would be available without insurance, including from sources of capital that don’t typically invest in litigation-related assets because of the high risk involved.  There are dozens of different capital sources beyond traditional litigation funders – including hedge funds, family offices, private equity firms, private credit lenders, and other alternative sources of capital – who are keenly interested in lending against WIP policies, as well as against other portfolio-based and single-case insurance policies.

WIP insurance can also be a very useful tool for lawyers within firms where the billable hour is king to get approval from executive or contingency fee committees, or from the broader partnership, to bring high-value contingency fee cases.  These policies provide the firm with a guaranteed minimum recovery from contingency fee litigation by the end of the policy’s term such that, if the cases don’t ultimately work out as planned, the financial result to the firm will be the same as if the lawyers on those cases had spent several years simply billing their time on non-contingency fee matters for clients who received a small discount on those lawyers’ hourly rates.

I should also note that, for any portfolio-based policy, as with some of the more traditional single-case policies like judgment preservation and adverse judgment insurance, premiums are generally in the form of one-time upfront payments.  But for portfolio policies more than single-case policies, there are also mechanisms like deferred and contingent or “D&C” premiums that insurers are increasingly willing to employ to bring down the upfront premium cost in exchange for a modest piece of the recovery waterfall if the cases or investments that comprise the insured portfolio are highly successful.

How are insurers underwriting these portfolio-based structures differently than single-case policies?  Are there specific underwriting thresholds, case mix requirements, or expected returns that make a portfolio “insurable”?

Most insurers define a “portfolio policy” as one that is insuring at least three to five cases, and the more the merrier.  These cases should be uncorrelated, such that they should not all rise and fall together, and the more diversity that can be introduced into the portfolio – with regard to identity of plaintiffs, identity of defendants, specific causes of action, subject matter of the litigation, etc. – the better, as well.

That being said, it is common for an insured portfolio to be comprised of cases from a single plaintiff or representing only a single subject matter area from a litigation funder, law firm, or group of lawyers within a law firm who specialize in that subject matter area – think patent infringement, antitrust, or mass tort litigation.  And of course, insurers are highly vigilant about adverse selection, and will not insure portfolios that they suspect to be comprised of a prospective insured’s cherrypicked worst or riskiest cases or investments.  The easiest way to mitigate this suspicion as a prospective insured is to insure a “complete set” – whether the entirety of a given fund from a litigation funder, a law firm’s entire contingency fee case book, a patentholder’s entire patent portfolio, or a litigant’s entire portfolio of plaintiff-side cases.

Underwriting one of these portfolios is a very different exercise than underwriting a JPI or AJI policy.  Rather than a single case with an extensive, well-developed record (including, as was often the case with JPI placements, the exact appellate record that would be put before an appellate court when they are asked to decide the case), insurers are often faced with a high number of cases and less detailed and voluminous information about each individual case.  Often, cases that are already underway will have a limited history of case filings and unfiled cases will have only a preliminary case description and damages evaluation.  Accordingly, while the number of cases increases substantially, having less information per case can result in the amount of underwriting time, and associated underwriting fees, being relatively similar to a JPI or AJI policy.

In terms of the actual underwriting process, it’s important to keep in mind that insurers do not need to put all their eggs in a single basket on portfolio polices like they do for a JPI or AJI policy.  Instead, they determine the likelihood of success for each case in the portfolio and then assign an expected return to that case.  Then, using a weighted average of all the cases, the insurer determines exactly how likely it is that the portfolio will collectively return an amount that exceeds the limits being purchased.  Insurers are also looking at other things, as well, like a law firm or litigation funder’s track record on similar cases or investments, the underwriting guidelines being used to select cases or investments, the bona fides of the key individuals involved, case budgets, and the judgment collection and enforcement risk presented by the relevant defendants.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the structure of portfolio-based insurance policies makes it much less likely that a policy could suffer a full limit loss given the number of cases or investments that would need to go poorly in order for that to happen.  This is another key differentiator from JPI, where a single adverse appellate court decision or bad remand outcome can sometimes cause a full limit loss.

Lastly, as I noted earlier, insurers will often look to include a deferred and contingent or “D&C” premium in portfolio-based policies, which allow the insurer to participate in the upside of a portfolio of cases or litigation-related investments if the portfolio turns out to be highly successful.  Since a D&C premium only kicks in after the insured has recovered an amount in excess of coverage limits, underwriters of portfolio-based policies with a D&C component will also evaluate the probability that a portfolio brings in proceeds well in excess of limits, thus entitling them to that additional backend premium.

For litigation funders raising capital or structuring new vehicles, how critical is it to have an insurance solution baked in from day one? Are LPs demanding it, or is it still seen as an optional enhancement?

It ultimately depends on the type of investment capital that a funder is looking to attract.  Traditional litigation finance LPs, who seek to make high-risk, high-reward investments, often view insurance as antithetical to why they are investing in litigation finance in the first place, because the premium costs – whether upfront or D&C – cut into their returns.  These investors, and those funders who follow the same ethos, are generally not interested in wrapping their funds with any form of principal protection insurance coverage because they don’t want to forfeit any of their upside in order to do so.

On the other hand, a litigation funder who wraps a new fund with principal protection insurance can attract an entirely new class of investors that typically does not invest in litigation finance – investors who don’t need to understand litigation funding, or even litigation itself, in order to invest.  These LPs may invest in an insurance-wrapped fund precisely because their downside is de minimus or, depending on the limits of the relevant policy, essentially zero, but with a high potential upside – albeit, not as high as the upside would be without insurance.  This makes insurance-wrapped funds an ideal target for certain investment banking, pension fund, private equity, private credit, university endowment, sovereign wealth, family office, and other investors who will happily accept lower returns in exchange for lower – or, again, depending on the specific policy structure, potentially zero – risk.

So based on that, I see insurance coverage on a fund-wide basis as an optional enhancement that is very funder- and LP-dependent.  But it’s important to remember that we have a significant amount of flexibility in how we can structure these policies to best achieve our clients’ financial and risk management goals.  To give one example, there was a deal I worked on that involved a loan that a funder made to a law firm where the funds for the loan came from multiple different LPs, some of which needed principal protection coverage and some of which did not.  We were able to structure an insurance policy that only insured the portion of the loan attributable to the LPs who needed insurance coverage and effectively treated the portion of loan funds that came from the other LPs as co-insurance on the policy.  The significant co-insurance piece brought the cost of coverage down from where it would have been had we insured the entirety of the loan or a high percentage of the loan funds coming from all LPs.  So even in situations where there are distinct or even polar opposite LP needs on a single investment, loan, or other transaction, we can often create an insurance-based solution that works to deliver an optimal balance of risk and reward for everyone, enabling deals to get done that just would not have happened without insurance.

About the author

John Freund

John Freund

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An LFJ Conversation with Lauren Harrison, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Signal Peak Partners

By John Freund |

Lauren Harrison serves as a co-founder and managing partner of Signal Peak Partners. Named one of Lawdragon’s Global 100 Leaders in Litigation Finance, Ms. Harrison brings over 25 years of high stakes commercial litigation experience to her role as funder. Prior to co-founding Signal Peak, Ms Harrison served as a Vice President to Law Finance Group.

As a trial lawyer, Lauren was a partner at Vinson & Elkins and later at Jones Walker. She was recognized as a Texas Super Lawyer annually from 2009 to 2021, a Best Lawyer in America for Intellectual Property, Antitrust Law and Commercial Litigation, and a Top Woman Attorney. Chambers recognized Ms. Harrison for her Antitrust work. She was awarded a Pro Bono College of the State of Texas Award for her work on behalf of nonprofit art institutions.

Lauren is a frequent speaker at conferences and law schools, presenting recently at BU Law School, SMU Law School, the UH Law Center, the Institute for Energy Law, and LitFinCon.

Below is our LFJ Conversation with Lauren Harrison:

Your inaugural Signal Peak Symposium brings together leaders from the judiciary, in-house counsel, and elite law firms. What motivated you to launch this invitation-only gathering, and what key message or change in the litigation-finance industry are you hoping the Symposium will advance?

Litigation funding conferences are a great way to connect with our counterparts within the industry. They offer space to discuss innovation and to workshop best practices. We are fortunate that, for the most part, third party funders recognize that each of us fills a niche. Rather than competing in a zero sum game, we contribute to the evolution of a powerful litigation tool. That said, industry events can devolve into echo chambers. We wanted to create an event where our peers do not form a supermajority, and where we can listen with fresh ears to new ideas.  Our sector faces rising tides of interest in regulation, taxation and disclosure. The time is now to come together to address those issues, and in order to do that it is important to have the full range of stakeholders and policymakers present. 

Signal Peak was founded on values like honesty, alignment of interests, speed, and creativity, and you’ve framed litigation funding as helping plaintiffs ascend complex cases. How does the Symposium help reinforce your firm’s identity and commitment to transparency and partner-first funding?

Litigation finance events typically do not draw much interest from the market side - practicing litigators and their clients. A point of pride at Signal Peak is that we are trial lawyers for trial lawyers. We want to hear attorneys’ insights about how we can be of help and to enjoy a level of discourse that comes from having experience with the type of complex commercial disputes that we are sourcing and underwriting. We have a comfort level with the tools, timelines and techniques of the adversarial process that builds trust. In a guild profession that is guided by ethical and fiduciary bounds, shared experience is significant. We expect our event to highlight our foundational expertise, to promote collaboration, and to create new opportunities to better serve our market. 

Your professional backgrounds are in civil litigation at top firms and then litigation funding. How does that dual experience shape your strategy at Signal Peak, and how do you expect that background to resonate with attorneys and plaintiffs attending the Symposium?

We understand that every first chair lawyer is essentially the CEO of their case, and some of their core executive functions are accessing needed capital and deploying resources efficiently towards case conclusion. Because we have worn the shoes of the trial attorneys who participate in funding, we are focused on keeping their and their clients’ needs front and center.  While we will never look for case control or intercede in the attorney-client relationship, we do look for opportunities to partner with top lawyers in ways that help them manage case expenses and durational risk. We like to say that all boats rise on a rising tide. Signal Peak strives to align with lawyers’ and their clients’ interests so that everyone has sufficient back end interest to reach their goals.

The Symposium will include a keynote tribute to H. Lee Godfrey, honoring his career. Why was it important to include that tribute in your inaugural event, and how does his legacy influence how you think about access to justice and the future of litigation finance?

Lee Godfrey and his partner the late Steve Susman developed the model that underlies Signal Peak’s business, and really our entire industry. We want to work with attorneys who are willing to invest in their cases just as we do, and Lee and Steve exemplified that with gusto. Lee was a personal friend and one of the great trial attorneys ever to set foot in a courtroom. Stories of his prowess are legion, and I do not want to steal anyone’s thunder by previewing them here. I will say that Lee’s voir dire was the stuff of legend, and his gentlemanly wittiness on cross examination will likely not be matched.

What are you hoping that someone considering working with Signal Peak (either as an attorney with a case needing funding or as a potential investor) will take away from the Symposium and from Signal Peak’s launch so far?  

We are excited to showcase our team. Before Mani Walia and I decided to join forces, we knew that our values and interests were aligned, but we did not predict the extent to which Signal Peak would feel greater than the sum of its parts. We are eager for our colleagues Jackson Schaap and Carly Thompson-Peters to share the spotlight with us. We could not have accomplished so much in such a short time without their brilliant collaboration. I hope that our friends who join us in Houston on February 26 will get to see the alchemy that blends our team and will understand that when they work with Signal Peak, they will become part of a cohesive and nimble group.

LFJ Conversation

An LFJ Conversation with Logan Alters, Co-Founder & Head of Growth at ClaimAngel

By John Freund |

Logan Alters is the Co-Founder and Head of Growth at ClaimAngel, the nation's first transparent legal-funding marketplace. He built the company from a concept into a nationwide platform trusted by 500+ law firms, 25+ funders, and 20,000+ fundings at $100M+ in volume, all at one standardized rate. Before ClaimAngel, Logan worked across MedTech, consumer products, and venture capital. He earned his degree from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business in three years while competing as a Division I point guard.

Below is our LFJ Conversation with Logan Alters:

ClaimAngel positions itself as a transparency-first platform at a time when plaintiff funding is facing heightened scrutiny from regulators and bar associations. How do you see ethics, disclosure, and alignment with ABA and state rules reshaping the future of the industry, and what specific standards is ClaimAngel trying to institutionalize?

We started ClaimAngel because we saw a gap that nobody was closing. Plaintiffs have access to a new asset, their case, but the industry built to serve them wasn't working. There are more than a thousand funding companies in the U.S., each setting its own rates, contracts, and processes. That fragmentation created an environment where anything goes. Rates compounded in ways clients couldn't understand until settlement. Fees got buried in contracts. Law firms experienced the frustration firsthand or heard the stories and decided not to recommend funding at all. The whole system defaulted to relationships over results: who you knew mattered more than what you offered. Funders competed for access instead of competing on terms. That model doesn't scale, and it doesn't serve plaintiffs.

That's the problem we set out to solve. Not by becoming funder #1,001, but by building marketplace infrastructure. In 2023, we pitched Morgan & Morgan's executives on a different future. A marketplace, not a funding company. One rate, one process, one outcome for every client. They didn't think it could be done, but they believed in the mission. John Morgan recently called ClaimAngel the Charles Schwab of client funding. The comparison resonated with us because it captures exactly what we're building. Schwab didn't invent investing. He standardized it. He made access equal and fees transparent. Before Schwab, Wall Street rewarded insiders. After Schwab, everyone got the same deal. Plaintiff funding is at that same inflection point.

We've now processed more than $100 million in volume across more than 20,000 fundings. Every contract includes plain-English rate disclosures. Every case shows plaintiffs what they'll owe at settlement before they sign and at any time in their portal. That's the standard: no surprises, no fine print. That's not a pilot. That's proof the model works.

We're not a funder. We're the infrastructure that makes funding predictable, transparent, and aligned with what plaintiffs and law firms actually need. When every client gets the same terms, and every contract looks the same, there's nothing to hide from regulators or bar associations. Standardization is the compliance solution.

The industry has operated like the wild west for too long. Regulators are stepping in. Bar associations are paying attention. Law firms are already choosing partners based on compliance and transparency, not relationships. That's the shift. More than 500 firms have at least one client funded through ClaimAngel. The next chapter will be defined by who builds the standard, not who has the best relationships. That's what we're here to do.

You describe plaintiff funding as being at a pivotal moment where opaque, high-rate transactions are giving way to marketplace models. What pressures or structural changes are driving that shift, and why is standardization becoming a competitive advantage?

The old model is breaking down. Not because anyone decided it should, because the market moved.

Law firms are shifting their focus toward efficiency and growth, minimizing anything that creates friction. They want funding that helps them maximize case value, not funding that eats into their fees at settlement. A firm managing thousands of cases can't afford the chaos of tracking liens with unpredictable compounding rates that make settlements harder to close. They want one process that works every time.

This is especially true for smaller firms. A solo practitioner or ten-person shop just wants to practice law. They don't want funding to become another thing they have to manage. Standardization means funding works as a tool in the background, not an encroachment on how they run their practice.

People are more financially aware than they were ten years ago. They understand interest. They ask about caps. They compare terms. The days of burying fees in contracts and hoping no one notices are over. When clients ask questions, firms need answers they can stand behind.

On the other side of the table, insurance carriers are already ahead. They use data to model case values, they identify plaintiffs under financial pressure, and they extend timelines knowing desperate clients will settle for less. Their algorithms win. When a plaintiff can't afford to wait, the carrier knows it, and the offer reflects that weakness. As funding becomes more widespread and predictable, carriers will have to adjust. Plaintiffs who can afford to be patient change the calculus entirely. That's the power of standardized funding.

Capital markets are moving too. Litigation finance is maturing into a real asset class, and institutional money is looking for places to deploy. But capital doesn't flow into fragmentation. A thousand funders with a thousand different rate structures and contract terms isn't investable infrastructure. Standardization is what unlocks scale. It's what allows the industry to grow from a few billion dollars to tens of billions deployed annually.

These forces aren't pushing toward a slightly better version of the old model. They're pushing toward new infrastructure. The companies that figure this out early will define the next era of plaintiff funding.

Your Rule of One framework aims for one rate, one process, one outcome. Why pursue a true standard instead of a traditional pricing strategy, and how do you respond to funders who argue flexibility is necessary for risk management?

One rate. One process. One outcome. That's not a tagline. It's the entire model.

A client knows exactly what they will owe. A law firm knows what a lien looks like at any point. No surprises. No shifting rates. No complicated projections. Simplicity isn't a marketing angle. It's a consumer protection tool and an operational stability tool for firms of any size.

The old model worked differently. Every funder created its own rate structure, contract terms, and interpretation of risk. Most clients don't understand why a four percent monthly compounding rate leads to a 6x repayment in 24 months. That complexity benefits only the insiders who understand it.

Bob Simon at Simon Law Group put it simply: lawyers have an ethical duty to do what's best for their clients. If a client needs access to capital to care for themselves or loved ones, you should help them find the lowest interest rate. That's not optional. It's the job.

The consequences of getting it wrong are real. Firms inherit cases all the time where the previous attorney used funding with poor terms, and by the time the case settles, the client's net is so low the case can't even settle. It leads to law firm fee reductions or the client drops the firm or it goes to trial. That's not what plaintiff funding is supposed to do.

Funders often defend rate flexibility as risk management. But pricing in plaintiff funding didn't evolve from risk. It evolved from fragmentation. With no shared standard, companies layered compounding, step-ups, duration triggers, underwriting fees, broker fees that can reach twenty percent, and buyout fees. None of this reflects actual case risk. It reflects legacy complexity built in isolation.

That complexity helped keep plaintiff funding adoption stuck at four to six percent of the total potential market. Rates rose so high that funding became a last resort. Yet more than ninety-seven percent of personal injury cases settle or win. When an asset class has a loss profile comparable to credit card defaults, extreme pricing is hard to defend. Real risk management comes from disciplined underwriting, transparency, and fair pricing, not stacking fees to justify high rates.

Standardization isn't a constraint. It's the path to mass adoption. The Rule of One isn't a theory. It's 20,000+ fundings across 500+ firms. That's proof at scale.

You’ve set a standardized rate of 27.8 percent simple annually with a 2x cap. What was the economic thinking behind those parameters, and how does this model align incentives across plaintiffs, law firms, and funders?

We didn't start by asking what rate we could charge. We started by asking who we're actually competing with.

Ninety-five percent of plaintiffs don't use plaintiff funding. When someone is injured, out of work, and waiting on a claim, they reach for credit cards and personal loans. That's the market we're converting.

The problem is that consumer credit wasn't built for a plaintiff's reality. It prices the borrower, not the case. It assumes steady income and monthly payments. A plaintiff has access to a new asset, their case, but a credit card can't tap into that. The pressure spills onto law firms and ultimately the settlement.

So we worked backward from that reality. If we want to convert plaintiffs away from credit cards, we need to beat credit card economics for someone who can't work, can't make monthly payments, and doesn't know when their case will settle. That's how we arrived at 27.8 percent simple rate with a 2x cap.

Here's what that looks like in practice. A plaintiff who takes $5,000 and settles in 18 months owes around $7,400 with all fees. With a typical compounding product with a slew of origination and servicing fees, that same funding could easily exceed $15,000. That difference is the gap between a client who walks away whole and a client who resents their attorney.

For funders, the math works if they're willing to evolve. The old model delivered returns that would make a hedge fund blush, but in just a small percentage of cases. Our model delivers lower per-case returns but at scale, with fast capital deployment, consistent servicing, and a loss rate in the single digits, comparable to credit card defaults. The key is predictability. Our 27.8% annual rate (no compounding ever) works out to 6.95% every three months until settlement or the 2x cap. The 2x cap means a plaintiff who takes $5,000 will never owe more than $10,000, and that cap doesn't hit until 46 months. Most "2x caps" in the industry hit at one, two, or three years. Ours gives plaintiffs nearly four years.

That rate is only sustainable because our marketplace collapsed the cost structure. Traditional models relied on sales teams, manual deployment, and relationship-driven acquisition. That overhead required high rates. Our marketplace removes most of that friction. No sales cycle, no manual underwriting queues, standardized processes across every case. Efficiency and market competition make a lower rate viable. Insurance carriers already use data to identify weak and desperate plaintiffs. Our marketplace gives funders the same advantage. We standardized underwriting with quality case data (injury details, liability, policy limits, case docs, and more), so funders make calculated decisions in minutes instead of reputation-based approvals. Lower costs and disciplined underwriting mean we can sustain 27.8% at scale. It's a different business. It requires funders who see where the industry is going and law firms that recognize their clients deserve better. We've built the infrastructure to make that easy.

The legacy model asked: how much can we charge? We asked: how do we convert the ninety-five percent? One question builds an industry. The other protects a margin.

You’ve argued that plaintiff funding is best understood as a tool that converts time into negotiating power. How does ClaimAngel’s marketplace help plaintiffs stay in the fight longer and capture more of their claim’s true value?

How many situations in life can you actually buy time? That's what plaintiff funding is. Not debt. Not a loan. Time. And when you have a legal case, time is power.

When someone is injured and out of work, time is the one thing they don't have. Bills pile up. Pressure builds. Insurance carriers know this and wait. The longer a plaintiff can't afford to hold out, the lower the offer. That's not negotiation. That's leverage working against the people who need it most.

Funding flips that dynamic. A plaintiff who can pay rent and cover medical bills while their case develops is a plaintiff who can wait for the right offer. That's why they hired their attorney in the first place: to fight for the true value of their claim, not to take the first check that shows up.

When plaintiffs have time, law firms can do the work they were hired to do. Gather full medicals. Wait for maximum recovery. Push back on lowball offers. The cases that settle for $40,000 under pressure become six-figure results when the client isn't calling every day saying they need the money now. One client told us she was three days from losing her apartment when she got funded. Eighteen months later, her case settled for six figures. That's what time buys. Firms get more revenue with less pressure to settle early. Clients walk away with what they deserve from the start.

But here's the problem with traditional funding: time is power until settlement day, when it turns into kryptonite. A plaintiff who borrowed $5,000 at compounding rates suddenly owes $15,000+. The attorney's fee gets reduced. The client's net recovery shrinks. Everyone fought for two years to maximize the settlement, and the funding lien swallows the value. That's not time as power. That's time as extraction. Our model solves this. At 27.8% simple with a 2x cap, that same $5,000 costs $7,400, not $15,000. The client and attorney walk away with what they earned. Time stays power, even at settlement.

That's what ClaimAngel's marketplace delivers. In traditional funding, a plaintiff applies to one funder, waits for approval, and might get rejected. Then they start over. Our marketplace removes that friction. Multiple funders see the case simultaneously. Standardized terms mean no negotiation. A plaintiff who applies Monday can have funding by Wednesday. When you're three days from losing your apartment, that speed is the difference between staying in the fight and taking whatever offer is on the table.

The industry maximized what plaintiffs owe. We maximize what plaintiffs keep.

LFJ Conversation

An LFJ Conversation with Ian Garrard, Managing Director of Innsworth Advisors

By John Freund |

Ian Garrard is the managing director of Innsworth Advisors Limited, the advisor and manager to the funds that provide third party litigation funding for high value claims in the UK, EU and US.

Claims under management include high profile and groundbreaking claims in the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal against Meta and Amazon, claims in the Netherlands against Oracle and Salesforce, as well as claims against VW in Germany and Apple in the US.  Before moving into litigation funding, Ian was a lawyer in private practice (on financing, restructuring and litigation matters) as well as a founder of specialist law firms and an advisor to major oil & gas interests on exploration and production assets.

Below is our LFJ Conversation with Ian Garrard:

The claim against Rightmove alleges that the portal charged estate-agents “excessive and unfair” listing fees, and that the action will proceed on an opt-out basis for thousands of agencies. What specifically attracted Innsworth to fund this case, and how does it fit with your overall litigation-funding strategy? 

Your readers will appreciate that we can’t say too much at this early stage, but on our evaluation it is a strong case on its merits, with a considerable amount of harm caused to the proposed class of businesses. Jeremy Newman, the proposed class representative and a former CMA panel member has an excellent team supporting him, led by lawyers from Scott+Scott UK LLP. Innsworth is a committed funder of opt out collective actions in the Competition Appeal Tribunal and this case fits squarely within our focus. More information on the claim is available at rightmovefeesclaim.com.

More generally, this is an exciting time for us. We are funding three other opt out claims in the CAT and we have just announced a claim on behalf of Uber drivers in the UK and Europe, which alleges that Uber has unlawfully used automated decision-making, including profiling, in its pricing systems to dynamically set driver pay by algorithm and reduce their take-home pay. If the claim doesn’t settle in the pre-action phase then the intention is to issue collective proceedings before the Amsterdam District Court in the Netherlands. We also have lots of promising cases in our pipeline at the moment, working in collaboration with a range of London and EU based law firms.

Opt-out class actions in the UK’s competition-law space have historically faced procedural and payout-challenges. How is the funding arrangement structured in this Rightmove claim to align incentives across Innsworth, the claimants, and their legal counsel? 

There has been much said and written about the challenges the UK’s opt out regime is working through - including the need to balance reasonable certainty as to the level of returns a funder will derive and the desire to ensure that the regime delivers for the benefit of the class. The benefit of any recovery by the class comes at a cost - as in any commercial context – and the CAT to its credit recognises the importance of third party funding to the functioning of the opt-out regime. Recognising this and the interests of the class, the funding is structured in a way that seeks to align those interests.

From a business model perspective, Rightmove commands a dominant share of UK property-portal traffic and listings (reportedly over 80%). How do you assess the strength of the antitrust and competition arguments in the claim, and how does Innsworth evaluate the potential for a precedent-setting outcome if the tribunal rules favourably? 

The Rightmove fees claim announcement follows a series of English unfair pricing judgments which have gone a long way to clarify how an English court or tribunal will approach these kinds of cases. Rightmove uses its high market share as a marketing tool and has achieved sky-high margins over many years, achieved through regularly increasing its prices.  Many agents feel they have no choice but to be on Rightmove and Rightmove knows that. Commentary from industry figures following the announcement of the claim has highlighted how strongly many class members feel about Rightmove’s pricing.

Litigation funding in large scale opt-out claims is increasingly visible to institutional investors. How does Innsworth view its role as a funder in terms of transparency, reputation-risk management, and alignment with claimant-interests?   

We take our role as a stakeholder in the UK (and global) litigation funding community very seriously and we are confident in the value that our funding provides. The service we provide, of non-recourse funding, protects claimants against the costs of litigation.

If our funding unlocks redress for a class, that is a recovery for those harmed that would not otherwise have been achieved, so there is therefore a synergy between the interests of a funder and a class harmed by breach of competition law.  Innsworth is transparent about its funding and terms of funding in the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

We do think there is a debate to be had about whether defendants should have access to financial information on e.g. a claim budget and funder commission. We think it’s fair that a defendant should be satisfied that a litigation funder can meet any adverse costs order made against it in an opt out claim (as England and Wales is a ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction). But currently defendants to these claims will scrutinise claim budgets and funding agreements in detail and use this to make opportunistic arguments, while claimants typically have no visibility on defendant budgets and funding. It’s an example of the information asymmetries which exist when seeking to hold dominant companies to account.

What is your take on the litigation funding market for opt out claims in England and Wales at the moment? 

We’ve seen a real slowdown in the number of claims being filed in the last year or so. A lot of this is due to uncertainty as to the level of return that the Competition Appeal Tribunal will permit a funder to receive, even if this has been freely agreed between a class representative and funder. Of course, the effect of PACCAR has made funding more challenging in England and Wales generally.

That said, Dr Kent’s recent success in her claim against Apple highlights the potential of the regime to hold dominant companies to account and to deliver meaningful redress to class members. The judgment is timely as the UK government is currently considering making reforms to the opt out regime in the face of a concerted lobbying effort from big business groups. We think the opt out regime is starting to deliver on its objective of improving competitiveness in the UK economy, so making any wholesale changes now would be counterproductive, but the prospect of reforms is adding to the uncertainty facing the regime.