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Community Spotlight: Caroline Taylor, Founding Partner, Ignitis

By John Freund |

Community Spotlight: Caroline Taylor, Founding Partner, Ignitis

Caroline Taylor is a Founding Partner of Ignitis, an early-stage litigation funder focused on developing cases to assess viability and prepare them for full litigation. With over a decade of litigation experience, Caroline brings a unique blend of funding expertise and strategic legal insight, leveraging an extensive professional network to support cases from inception to resolution. Ignitis partners with claimants, foundations, corporate clients, lawyers, experts, funders, and other legal professionals to ensure that each case has what it needs to maximize its chance of success.

Before founding Ignitis, Caroline was a partner at a leading international collective redress firm. She played a key role in expanding the firm’s European operations, including opening offices across several countries, assembling and leading teams, and driving case development and management. Her work in securing litigation funding helped support the development of over 30 cases across Europe and the UK. Caroline’s ability to seamlessly integrate operations between U.S. and European offices proved instrumental in advancing initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Her deep understanding of collective redress procedures in multiple European jurisdictions, combined with her experience taking cases from concept to resolution, makes her well-suited for her role at Ignitis.

During her time in private practice, Caroline specialized in class actions, complex litigation, and personal injury cases, gaining firsthand experience of the impact corporate misconduct can have on individuals. This exposure sharpened her litigation skills and solidified her commitment to justice. Caroline also served in several leadership roles, including as a Board Member of the American Association for Justice, Chair of its Railroad Section, and as a Board and Executive Committee Member of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association. She has received numerous accolades, including recognition by The National Trial Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers. Caroline is a frequent speaker at international legal conferences.

She is admitted to practice in Tennessee, Florida, and Kentucky state courts, as well as in numerous federal and appellate courts in the United States and England and Wales.

Company Name and Description: Ignitis AG is an early-stage funding company. Ignitis was founded to solve a critical challenge: parties often need initial capital to develop the case into something viable to attract larger litigation funders. Essentially, to secure funding, one must first invest capital. Drawing on decades of experience in litigation and institutional investment, we are uniquely positioned to provide the capital and expertise needed to kickstart cases and drive them toward resolution. We focus solely on early-stage funding, ensuring that quality cases get the financing they need to be successful while increasing access to justice.

Company Websitewww.ignitisag.com

Year Founded: 2024

Headquarters: Zug, Switzerland

Area of Focus: We focus specifically on initial case development and early-stage funding. We put our money in at initial, risky stages, to develop the case and prepare it for full funding and filing. We not only inject capital, but we also provide expertise and advice along the way to ensure that the case has the greatest opportunity for success.

Member Quote: “Too many meritorious cases never make it to court, not because they lack merit, but because the injured parties lack the financial resources or the know-how to move forward. At Ignitis, we are committed to improving access to justice by investing in cases that other funders might overlook and offering the expertise needed for thorough case development—ensuring more individuals have their day in court.”

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John Freund

John Freund

Commercial

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King & Spalding Sued Over Litigation Funding Ties and Overbilling Claims

By John Freund |

King and Spalding is facing a malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty lawsuit from former client David Pisor, a Chicago-based entrepreneur, who claims the law firm pushed him into a predatory litigation funding deal and massively overbilled him for legal services. The complaint, filed in Illinois state court, accuses the firm of inflating its rates midstream and steering Pisor toward a funding agreement that primarily served the firm's financial interests.

An article in Law.com reports that the litigation stems from King and Spalding's representation of Pisor and his company, PSIX LLC, in a 2021 dispute. According to the complaint, the firm directed him to enter a funding arrangement with an entity referred to in court as “Defendant SC220163,” which is affiliated with litigation funder Statera Capital Funding. Pisor alleges that after securing the funding, King and Spalding tied its fee structure to it, raised hourly rates, and billed over 3,000 hours across 30 staff and attorneys within 11 months, resulting in more than $3.5 million in fees.

The suit further alleges that many of these hours were duplicative, non-substantive, or billed at inflated rates, with non-lawyer work charged at partner-level fees. Pisor claims he was left with minimal control over his case and business due to the debt incurred through the funding arrangement, despite having a company valued at over $130 million at the time.

King and Spalding, along with the associated litigation funder, declined to comment. The lawsuit brings multiple claims including legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and violations of Illinois’ Consumer Legal Funding Act.

Legal Finance and Insurance: Burford, Parabellum Push Clarity Over Confrontation

By John Freund |

An article in Carrier Management highlights a rare direct dialogue between litigation finance leaders and insurance executives aimed at clearing up persistent misconceptions about the role of legal finance in claims costs and social inflation.

Burford Capital’s David Perla and Parabellum Capital’s Dai Wai Chin Feman underscore that much of the current debate stems from confusion over what legal finance actually is and what it is not. The pair participated in an Insurance Insider Executive Business Club roundtable with property and casualty carriers and stakeholders, arguing that the litigation finance industry’s core activities are misunderstood and mischaracterized. They contend that legal finance should not be viewed as monolithic and that policy debates often conflate fundamentally different segments of the market, leading to misdirected criticism and calls for boycotts.

Perla and Feman break legal finance into three distinct categories: commercial funding (non-recourse capital for complex business-to-business disputes), consumer funding (non-recourse advances in personal injury contexts), and law firm lending (recourse working capital loans).

Notably, commercial litigation finance often intersects with contingent risk products like judgment preservation and collateral protection insurance, demonstrating symbiosis rather than antagonism with insurers. They emphasize that commercial funders focus on meritorious, high-value cases and that these activities bear little resemblance to the injury litigation insurers typically cite when claiming legal finance drives inflation.

The authors also tackle common industry narratives head-on, challenging assumptions about funder influence on verdicts, market scale, and settlement incentives. They suggest that insurers’ concerns are driven less by legal finance itself and more by issues like mass tort exposure, opacity of investment vehicles, and alignment with defense-oriented lobbying groups.

Courmacs Legal Leverages £200M in Legal Funding to Fuel Claims Expansion

By John Freund |

A prominent North West-based claimant law firm is setting aside more than £200 million to fund a major expansion in personal injury and assault claims. The substantial reserve is intended to support the firm’s continued growth in high-volume litigation, as it seeks to scale its operations and increase its market share in an increasingly competitive sector.

As reported in The Law Gazette, the move comes amid rising volumes of claims, driven by shifts in legislation, heightened public awareness, and a more assertive approach to legal redress. With this capital reserve, the firm aims to bolster its ability to process a significantly larger caseload while managing rising operational costs and legal pressures.

Market watchers suggest the firm is positioning itself not only to withstand fluctuations in claim volumes but also to potentially emerge as a consolidator in the space, absorbing smaller firms or caseloads as part of a broader growth strategy.

From a legal funding standpoint, this development signals a noteworthy trend. When law firms build sizable internal war chests, they reduce their reliance on third-party litigation finance. This may impact demand for external funders, particularly in sectors where high-volume claimant firms dominate. It also brings to the forefront important questions about capital risk, sustainability, and the evolving economics of volume litigation. Should the number of claims outpace expectations, even a £200 million reserve could be put under pressure.