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.
