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Community Spotlight: David Kerstein, Founder & Managing Director, Arcadia Finance

March 19, 2025

Community Spotlight: David Kerstein, Founder & Managing Director, Arcadia Finance

An early adopter of litigation finance with ten years of experience as a funding professional, David Kerstein uses his depth of knowledge and experience to serve as a trusted and strategic partner and advisor to lawyers and clients seeking to manage litigation risk and spend.

Dave is a sought-after speaker and recognized leader in litigation finance who has been named among Lawdragon’s “Global 100 Leaders in Legal Finance” and selected by Who’s Who Legal as a “Thought Leader in Third Party Funding.” Prior to founding Arcadia Finance in June of 2024 with fellow Managing Directors Ronit Cohen and Joshua Libling, he served as Validity Finance’s Managing Director and Senior Investment Officer.

In addition to co-leading Validity’s origination and structuring teams, he helped to guide Validity’s strategic growth into new and expanded markets and avenues for investment. Prior to joining Validity, Dave was a senior investment manager at Bentham IMF, now Omni Bridgeway. Before entering the world of litigation finance, Dave spent fifteen years as a trial lawyer handling complex commercial disputes at Gibson Dunn. With his deep experience as a litigator, Dave understands the landscape attorneys and their clients face when pursuing important claims and is uniquely positioned to help them navigate it. As a long-suffering Jets, Mets, Knicks and Islanders fan, Dave is keenly aware that facing adversity can build character. He knows that every litigation has obstacles that must be overcome but that those obstacles can be used as stepping-stones that guide us to achieving our goals.

Company Name and Description: At Arcadia Finance, we go beyond traditional litigation finance to provide frictionless funding, empowering clients and partners to achieve their legal goals through customized financial solutions and unparalleled support. Our seamless collaboration, clear deal terms, and broad mandate empower clients to navigate challenges, make informed decisions, and secure capital – fast. Led by industry veterans with over $400 million invested across 80+ deals, Arcadia Finance offers adaptable solutions for all–from litigation boutiques to AmLaw firms and corporations. Arcadia Finance’s mission is to invest in meritorious litigation, and with backing from multiple and flexible capital providers, we find new ways to help clients and law firms finance, monetize, and share risk on their legal assets. Our solutions include everything from traditional single-case funding and law firms portfolios, to purchasing companies or patent portfolios whose primary value is litigation. At every stage from pre-litigation to appeal and enforcement, Arcadia has the experience, flexibility, and capital to assist.

Company Website: arcadiafin.com

Year Founded: 2024

Headquarters: New York, New York

Area of Focus: With a focus on U.S.-based commercial and patent litigation and domestic and international arbitration, Arcadia Finance is open to the full spectrum of litigation-based assets, from mass torts to law firm lending to patent acquisition, including cross-border and offshore matters. We consider cases in all federal and state courts, as well domestic and international arbitrations.    

Member Quote: “Over my 25+ years of work in the legal and litigation finance industries, I’ve seen firsthand how meritorious claims can falter due to financial constraints. That’s why I’m passionate about litigation funding – it ensures that the strength of a case, not the size of a wallet, determines its outcome.”

Commercial

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Commercial

Jonathan Sablone Launches Sablone Advisory LLC, a Boutique Law and Advisory Firm Focused on Litigation Finance

By John Freund |

Jonathan Sablone, a commercial disputes attorney with three decades of cross-border, financial services, and litigation finance experience, has launched Sablone Advisory LLC — a Boston-based boutique positioned to serve claimants, funders, and insurers across the legal finance ecosystem under the tagline "at the intersection of law and finance™."

According to Sablone Advisory LLC, the new firm offers underwriting, diligence, monitoring, and asset management services to litigation funders and to insurers offering contingent risk products. On the claimant side, Sablone Advisory works with plaintiffs and their counsel to position cases for funding, including packaging case portfolios for cross-collateralized funding and insurance wrappers — services that have become increasingly central as funders and insurers structure deals across multiple matters and risk layers.

"I founded Sablone Advisory to assist clients with the most intractable problems and issues facing the legal finance industry," said Sablone in announcing the launch. "'At the intersection of law and finance' is not just a slogan, but a practical, commercial approach to legal problem-solving that I have practiced for decades."

The launch reflects a continuing trend in the litigation finance industry: senior practitioners with capital-markets and complex-litigation backgrounds spinning out of large institutional platforms to offer specialized, independent advisory and underwriting services. As funders increasingly structure portfolio-level deals, layer ATE and contingent risk insurance into capital stacks, and pursue cross-border recoveries, demand for senior independent diligence and asset management — particularly from professionals fluent in both legal strategy and structured finance — has grown.

For claimants and their counsel, the firm's case-positioning services are likely to resonate in a market where funders are increasingly selective about case quality, structure, and counsel pedigree. For funders and insurers, an independent boutique offering monitoring and asset management — separate from origination — represents the kind of service-provider infrastructure that more mature alternative-asset markets typically develop as they scale.

Inquiries can be directed to Jonathan Sablone at jsablone@sabloneadvisory.com or via www.sabloneadvisory.com.

Commercial

Colorado HB 1421 Targets PE and Non-Attorney Funding of Law Firms in Bipartisan Push

By John Freund |

Colorado lawmakers have introduced HB 1421, a bill that would sharply restrict the ability of state law firms to enter financial or contractual arrangements with alternative business structures (ABS) and any entity in which non-attorneys hold ownership stakes or exert direction over legal practice. The bill is notable both for the reach of its restrictions and for the unusual coalition behind it.

As reported by The Sum and Substance, the legislation is sponsored by Democratic Rep. Javier Mabrey of Denver and Republican House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell of Monument, with active support from the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association — typically opposing forces in business-litigation policy debates. The bill was scheduled for its first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on April 29.

HB 1421 would prohibit Colorado law firms from entering arrangements with ABS-style structures relating to legal services, practicing in professional companies where non-lawyers own interests or direct lawyer judgment, or compensating any party where compensation depends on a percentage of legal fees or case recoveries. The bill would also empower courts to halt offending arrangements, order fee reimbursement to clients, and disgorge ABS profits derived from prohibited activities. The article specifically references Burford Capital's litigation funding presence in framing the bill's broader policy concern with non-lawyer financial stakes in legal outcomes.

The legislation lands at a moment when private equity ownership of legal services is expanding rapidly in jurisdictions that permit it — Arizona, Utah, and the District of Columbia — and where PE-backed national platforms are increasingly partnering with firms in non-ABS jurisdictions to extend their operating reach. The Colorado bill, if enacted, would cut against that expansion model by restricting how Colorado firms can collaborate with out-of-state, non-attorney-owned platforms.

For the litigation finance community, the bill is a meaningful data point. Although disclosure-based reform has dominated state-level TPLF debate in 2025-26, HB 1421 reflects a parallel and somewhat different policy thrust: not transparency about funding, but structural limits on the ownership and economic relationships that surround legal practice. The convergence of plaintiffs' bar and chamber-of-commerce support behind a single bill is itself rare, and may presage similar coalitions in other non-ABS states facing PE-driven consolidation pressure.

Commercial

Triple-I Tracks the State-Level Wave of Third-Party Litigation Funding Reform

By John Freund |

A new Triple-I research piece outlines the rapidly expanding state-level reform agenda targeting third-party litigation funding, with disclosure mandates, foreign-funder bans, and registration regimes advancing in legislatures across the country as federal action remains slower-moving.

According to Triple-I's Lewis Nibbelin, Georgia led the most consequential 2025 round of reform with legislation requiring litigation financiers to register with the Department of Banking and Finance and prohibiting funder influence over case outcomes — measures that Triple-I links to subsequent auto insurance rate reductions and dividends to Georgia drivers. Louisiana followed with its widely covered Department of Insurance partnership with the NICB and 4WARN to combat TPLF marketing tactics, alongside legislation requiring attorneys to disclose TPLF contracts within 30 days of retainer or funding execution.

Other states are moving in parallel. Mississippi's new law, effective July 1, mandates disclosure of foreign litigation funding to address concerns about exploitation by non-U.S. entities. Utah passed comparable restrictions in March 2026. Michigan's House committee bill — already covered in LFJ — would ban foreign TPLF entirely while requiring disclosure and registration of all funders. Missouri, Tennessee, and Ohio are advancing similar foreign-funding bans, with the Tennessee and Ohio bills already passing their respective state Houses.

The piece references a joint NICB/4WARN study quantifying the scale of the consumer-facing TPLF market: $380 million in online search advertising between June 2024 and June 2025, and 27.8 million clicks to TPLF websites in June 2025 alone. Triple-I cites broader tort cost figures from the Perryman Group and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse — including $35.8 billion in direct annual losses and roughly $600 per U.S. household — to frame the policy stakes.

Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple, quoted in the piece, framed the partnership as protecting citizens "from opportunists who manipulate the claims process to fuel excessive litigation, which is a primary driver of our high insurance costs." For commercial litigation funders, the rapid proliferation of state-level disclosure and foreign-funder-ban regimes represents a meaningful compliance overlay — particularly for cross-border deals and structured funding vehicles where investor identity, jurisdiction, and reporting timing now vary materially by state.