Anthony Johnson launched a new thought leadership website based on customer feedback on December 7, 2023. “The new platform is specifically designed to cater to the needs of legal professionals and firms,” says Anthony Johnson (AJ). “We took extensive customer feedback into account while building this platform, aiming to provide a comprehensive guidance system that enhances operational efficiency, client satisfaction, and profitability.” The new website's mission is clear: to address the frustrations, wants, fears, and aspirations of legal professionals, enabling them to achieve positive business outcomes. AJ understands the importance of sound business management principles and up-to-date legal technology reporting in today's competitive landscape. Transparency fosters trust, collaboration, and innovation within the legal system. Therefore, the site emphasizes the benefits of transparent legal data practices to empower legal professionals and promote excellence in the field. The platform offers a wide array of free educational downloadables and media resources, enabling the audience to navigate the complexities of the legal industry and succeed in their endeavors. AJ is committed to providing valuable content that equips legal professionals with the knowledge and tools they need to excel. The site will continue to deliver high-quality content and empower legal professionals. Visit https://awesomeattorney.io/ to explore the available resources. To learn more about Anthony, click the link below. https://www.linkedin.com/in/awesomeattorney/ For media inquiries contact: Margaret@stellium.co

On December 6^th, 2023, Litigation Finance Journal produced its final event of the year: Legal Tech and LitFin: How Will Tech Impact Litigation Finance Globally? Tets Ishikawa moderated an insightful and pertinent discussion on the use of legal tech in the litigation finance industry. Panelists included Nick Rowles-Davies (NRD), Founder of Lexolent, Isabel Yang (IY), Founder of Arbilex, and Joshua Masia (JM), Co-Founder and CEO of Dealbridge.ai. Below are some key takeaways from the event (answers have been truncated for the purpose of this article): Legal tech is quite a broad term.  What does the legal tech landscape mean to you, and how does it fit into your business? IY: We’re in a very exciting time in legal tech. Where I sit, I primarily deal with the underlying technology being artificial intelligence (AI). The primary advances in advanced AI have primarily occurred out of language being the source data. A lot of these text-based AI advancements all hold great significance for the practice of law. At Arbilex, we are taking advantage of large language modeling (LLM) to reduce the cost of data acquisition. When we take court briefings and unstructured data and try to turn that into structured data, the cost of that process has dramatically decreased, because of Chat GPT and the latest LLMs. On the flipside, because AI has become so advanced, a lot of off-the-shelf solutions have tended towards a black box solution. So the model’s output has become a more challenging task. At Arbilex, we have always focused on building the most stable AI—so we focus on how we can explain a particular prediction to our clients. We are increasingly investing a lot of our time and human capital into building that bridge between AI and that use case. How relevant has legal tech been, and will it be, in the growth of the litigation finance sector?  JM: When we look at scaling operational processes, a lot of times we have to put our traditional computer science hat on and ask, ‘how have we historically solved these problems and what has changed in the past several years to evolve this landscape?’ A lot of the emphasis with technology has been about normalizing and standardizing how we look at these data sets. There’s a big issue when you look at this approach and what existing platforms have been doing—this is a very human business. Because of that, there’s a lot of ad hoc requests that get mixed in. So what gen-AI is doing, we’re getting to a point where you don’t have to over-structure your sales or diligence process. Maybe the first few dozen questions you’re asking of a given data set are the same, but eventually we want to be able to ask questions that are specific to this deal. So being able to call audibles and ad-hoc analysis of data sets was really hard to do before the addition of generative AI. NRD: Legal tech is becoming increasingly relevant, but the real effect and usefulness has grown over time. It makes repetitive tasks easier, and provides insights that are not always readily apparent. But in terms of the specific use of AI to triage outcoming matters, we identify matters in different areas—is this something we simply aren’t going to assess, will it be sent back for further information, does it fit the bucket of something we would fund per our original mandate, or does it go on the platform for the purpose of others to look at and invest in that particular matter. AI is having an increasing impact and is being used with more regularity by litigation funders who are funding they can increase efficiency and get to a ‘yes’ much more quickly. A lot of lawyers would say, this is fascinating, but ultimately this is a human industry. Every circumstance will be different, because they will come down to the behaviors of human beings in that time. Is there a way that AI can capture behavioral dynamics? IY: In general, we need to have realistic expectations of AI. That comes from, what humans are uniquely good at are not necessarily the things that AI is good at. AI is really good at pattern-spotting. Meaning, if I train the model to look for recurring features of particular cases—say, specific judges in specific jurisdictions, when coming up against a specific type of argument or case—then AI in general has a very good ability to assign the weighting to a particular attribute in a way that humans instinctively can come to the same place, you can’t really quantify the impact or magnitude of a specific attribute. The other thing that we need to be realistic about, is that cases are decided not just on pattern, but on case-specific fact attributes (credibility of a witness, availability of key evidence). If you train AI to look for things that are so specific to one case, you end up overfitting the model, meaning your AI is so good at looking for one specific variable, that it loses it general predictive power over a large pool of cases. What I would caution attorneys, is use AI to get a second opinion on things you believe are a pattern. In arbitration, attorneys might use AI on tribunal matters—tribunal composition. AI models are way better at honing in on patterns—but things like ‘do we want to produce this witness vs. another witness,’ that is not something we should expect AI to predict. For the full panel discussion, please click here.

Watch this expert panel discussion to understand the growing role of technology in the litigation finance sector. Gain valuable insights into how AI, machine learning, and other advancements are reshaping key aspects of the industry, from origination to risk management. Originally presented in December 2023, this discussion remains highly relevant as technology continues to reshape the litigation finance landscape. Key takeaways include:

• How is technology driving growth and efficiency in litigation finance? Explore the key advancements and their impact on the industry.
• Discover how firms are using technology to enhance case origination, underwriting, CRM, and risk management strategies.
• Examine how firms are measuring the value of technology investments and what their expectations are for ROI.
• Understand the challenges firms face in implementing new technologies and integrating them with existing systems.
• Explore emerging trends and predictions for the future of technology in litigation finance.

Ohio’s defendants should know whether a third-party litigation funding firm is financing a lawsuit against them, the Insurance Information Institute’s (Triple-I) chief insurance officer, Dale Porfilio said, in testimony today before the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee. Third-party litigation funders (TPLF) provide billions of dollars each year to U.S. plaintiffs and their legal counsel, yet only a handful of U.S. states, such as Indiana and Montana, have required plaintiffs to disclose in court whether a TPLF is financially supporting a civil lawsuit. "Without any direct ties to litigated cases and minimal transparency, institutional investors and even sovereign nations are contributing significant amounts of capital toward litigation suits for the sole intent of making a profit," Porfilio stated. "Without transparency, we are not able to provide deep data-driven insights about TPLF’s impacts on consumers and the insurance industry. Therefore, Triple-I supports mandatory disclosure of TPLF so we can study the impacts on consumers and carriers alike." A Swiss Re Institute report published in 2021 estimated more than half of the $17 billion in TPLF monies deployed globally in 2020 were in the U.S. Moreover, while TPLF investments offered internal rates of return exceeding 25 percent, commercial liability plaintiffs who used TPLF firms to finance their litigation saw the settlement proceeds allocated to them decrease by 12 percent, this same Swiss Re Institute report estimated. "The insurance industry retains claim adjusters, litigation managers, and defense attorneys to help settle claims. The portion allocated to defense costs are defined as ’Defense and Cost Containment Expenses’ (DCC). These expense dollars across all P&C (property and casualty) products increased 30 percent from 2016 to 2022, while increasing 60 percent for general liability (GL) products across these same years. GL products are where more of the complex and high-limit litigation occurs for large corporations. Because TPLF is not disclosed in Ohio as well as most other states, Triple-I cannot today quantify how much TPLF is contributing to the increase in DCC and the industry’s financial results," Porfilio testified. Triple-I has been educating and informing consumers about its growing concern with third-party litigation funding under the broader umbrella of what the organization refers to as "legal system abuse." Triple-I defines legal system abuse as policyholder or plaintiff attorney practices which increase costs and time to settle insurance claims. While litigation is considered a policyholder’s last resort, Porfilio continued, legal system abuse exploits litigation when a disputed claim could have been resolved without judicial intervention. Legal system abuse contributes to higher costs for insurance operations and policyholder pricing, Triple-I’s chief insurance officer concluded.

As litigation funders are keen to regularly emphasise, third-party financing is not only useful to directly support a company’s legal claims, it is also a valuable tool to allow the business to continue its operations unhindered whilst pursuing meritorious litigation. In a press release from Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., the mineral exploration company announced that it has secured a debt financing deal including capital from Drumcliffe Partners, its primary litigation funder. The financing has been secured to support its ongoing operations and strategic initiatives, whilst it pursues an arbitration claim against Mexico over allegations that the country’s government ‘wrongfully denied environmental approval of the ExO Phosphate project in breach of NAFTA.’ The note and warrant purchase agreement was agreed on December 1, with Two Seas Capital leading the financing and additional investors including, Four World Capital Management, and the DP Special Opportunities Fund I, LLC (managed by Drumcliffe Partners). The financing deal includes ‘the issuance of promissory notes with an 11.0% annual interest rate, totaling up to $6.0 million, and warrants that allow them to purchase shares of Odyssey's common stock over the next three years.’ Sina Toussi, founder and chief investment officer of Two Seas Capital, highlighted that the funding would “bridge Odyssey to what we believe will be a just judgment in the arbitration and position Odyssey to pursue several new high-value projects.” James C. Little, CEO of Drumcliffe Partners stated they “continue to believe in the strong merits of the claim and Odyssey’s entitlement to compensation as the result of Mexico’s arbitrary and unfair treatment in breach of international law.”  The arbitration panel’s decision in the NAFTA case is expected in early 2024.