LegalPay, a FinTech in legal and insolvency space, announced that it has elevated Kashish Grover as Chief Operating Officer (COO). Kashish will be leading LegalPay’s domestic and global operations and accelerating the company’s long-term growth strategy. He will also be responsible for building new initiatives within legal payments infra, both domestic and international. The company is the largest scaled player in the legal and insolvency financing market and is backed by marquee investors such as 9unicorns, Amity Incubation Fund, Venture Catalysts, LetsVenture and other family offices. The company is expanding in four cities in a span of next one month, namely Mumbai, Bengaluru, Surat and Pune. Founder and CEO, Kundan Shahi said, “Kashish joined us as the first person and has been instrumental in building LegalPay into what it is today. He has been successfully leading our both verticals – litigation financing and interim financing and has closed landmark transactions in both during the last two years. As we double down on growth while consistently increasing revenues, Kashish’s experience as a resilient leader and organisation builder will play a pivotal role. We wish him luck for his new role and challenges.” Kashish joined LegalPay as Chief Investment Officer in January 2021 and has previously worked with organisations such as Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Goldman Sachs in the deal advisory and investment management division. He also co-founded a food and beverage start-up in cloud kitchens that was entirely bootstrapped and exited after scaling it in Delhi NCR.

The topic of disclosure in litigation where there is the presence of third-party funding has been a hot topic in several jurisdictions, with defendants strongly arguing that there needs to be an increased level of transparency when it comes to litigation funding. In a recent development, outlined in The National Law Review, a judge in the District of Delaware has ruled that parties in patent litigation cases must comply with enhanced Rule 7.1 disclosures, specifically those required around funding arrangements. Chief Judge Connolly, in the case of Longbeam Technologies v. Amazon.com, stated concerns around the plaintiff’s lack of disclosure for its third-party funding and stayed the case to allow for the defendant to pursue discovery on Longbeam’s litigation funding. This latest example of a court mandating further disclosure around third-party funding agreements is unlikely to be the last, and as the use of litigation funding increases around the globe, both funders and litigants should keep a close eye on whether courts are mandating a heightened degree of transparency.

One of the central tenets of litigation funding is the importance of risk management and analysis not only during case selection, but further down the road when counsel must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of settlement. Whilst law firms bring their significant weight of experience and expertise to bear when evaluating settlement options during dispute resolution, the ability to pinpoint the exact right moment and terms under which to settle is always a challenge. In an announcement by The Legal Tech Fund, one potential solution to this challenge is being explored, as the fund has invested in SettleIndex, a fintech company aiming to reduce risk through detailed financial modeling. The SettleIndex platform is designed to provide lawyers with the tools to evaluate the risk of any case, allowing them to visualize potential outcomes and map that against the financial risk of each option. The value of such technology is not only present for lawyers and their clients, but also for funders eager for more ways to assess case viability and mitigate risk when financing a particular case. Being able to model not only probabilities of success, but also the individual pathways to reliable financial return could be a unique tool in a funder’s arsenal.

While the availability of, and access to, litigation funding has been a boon for those seeking access to justice, some industry insiders argue that reforms have not gone far enough, and that more change is needed. One area of interest is recoverability for plaintiff costs, where currently claimants still stand to lose financially in order to cover the costs of the very funding that has allowed them to access justice. Writing for The Law Society Gazette, managing director of LionFish, Tets Ishikawa, argues that where defendants have been proven to have harmed plaintiffs, it is right and just that they recoup the costs for an action caused by the defendant’s wrongdoing. He argues this is doubly true in cases where the defendant prolongs proceedings through inaction or failure to properly handle proceedings, thereby causing claimant’s costs to rise; as is true in the case of Cabo Concepts Ltd v MGA Entertainment. Ishikawa also acknowledges that reform should not mean recoverability would be available in all commercial litigation matters, but that it should still be at the liberty of the court to make such determinations on a case-by-case basis. He points out that the basis behind non-recoverability is now outdated, and fundamentally misaligned with the principles of widening the avenues to legal redress that litigation funding is supposed to provide.