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Community Spotlight: Garrett Ordower, Partner, Scale LLP

By John Freund |
April 3, 2025

Community Spotlight: Garrett Ordower, Partner, Scale LLP

Garrett is a seasoned attorney and head of Scale LLP’s Litigation Finance Team. With extensive experience across both commercial and consumer litigation finance sectors, Garrett brings a uniquely comprehensive perspective to the field. He has developed specialized expertise in sourcing, evaluating, structuring, and managing diverse funding arrangements, from single-case investments to complex law firm portfolio facilities. Throughout his career, Garrett has successfully navigated intricate and often contentious workouts involving various stakeholders, including claimholders, attorneys, funders, and medical providers.

Beyond traditional litigation finance, Garrett has emerged as a thought leader in legal innovation. He advises on sophisticated structuring and ethics issues for startups in litigation finance, LegalTech, JusticeTech, and advises on a broad range of ethics issues including emerging issues relating to the use of artificial intelligence to deliver legal services to both consumers and businesses. His expertise extends to alternative business structures and two-company models that enable innovative legal service delivery while maintaining ethical compliance. Garrett is licensed to practice in New York, Illinois, and Arizona.

Garrett began his career as a litigator at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, engaging in significant litigation and white collar matters. He then transitioned to one of the pioneering commercial litigation funders, Lake Whillans Litigation Finance, as a managing director. At Lake Whillans, Garrett participated in tens of millions in litigation finance deals including asset purchases, law firm lending portfolios, and claimholder funding. His articles on litigation finance topics have been widely published, and he was recognized as one of Lawdragon’s Global 100 Leaders in Litigation Finance.

Garrett then joined Mighty Group, Inc., as its General Counsel following the company’s Series B raise. He handled all legal aspects of Mighty’s significant consumer litigation finance portfolio, which included investments in medical receivables, pre-settlement advances, and law firm lending. Garrett also played a pivotal role in helping Mighty create an innovative tech-forward competitor to existing personal injury law firms.

Since joining Scale, Garrett has focused his practice on helping innovative companies in the legal and litigation finance spaces. As head of the Litigation Finance Team, Garrett has helped litigation finance companies with fund structures, commercial and consumer transactions, and ethics and regulatory advice. Garrett has also advised a wide variety of LegalTech and JusticeTech companies on structuring their businesses in order to achieve their goals in an ethical and compliant manner, including doing so through the use of AI.

Prior to practicing, Garrett graduated from the University of Chicago Law School where he was Editor-in-Chief of the University of Chicago Law Review, and clerked on the Northern District of Illinois and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Garrett maintains an active pro bono practice and recently secured the vacatur of his client’s manslaughter conviction. Prior to law school, Garrett worked as a newspaper reporter and investigative journalist.

Company Name and Description: Scale LLP, a full-service, national law firm that rethinks the traditional law firm model. Scale provides a tech-forward, distributed platform that reduces overhead and increases efficiency to offer the best legal talent at a competitive price-point.

Company Website: scalefirm.com

Year Founded: 2017

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA

Area of Focus: Scale LLP’s Litigation Finance Team delivers comprehensive solutions across the entire litigation funding ecosystem. We provide specialized counsel to litigation finance companies, claimholders, law firms, and investors, drawing on our team’s firsthand experience having worked on all sides of litigation finance transactions. Our services encompass fund formation, deal structuring, portfolio construction, regulatory compliance, and workout solutions and litigation related to distressed assets.

Our practice uniquely bridges both commercial and consumer litigation finance sectors, allowing us to develop innovative hybrid approaches that maximize return while managing risk appropriately. We combine deep litigation experience with sophisticated financial structuring capabilities to deliver practical advice on complex transactions ranging from single-case investments to multi-jurisdictional portfolio facilities.

Beyond traditional litigation finance, we lead the field in advising LegalTech and JusticeTech companies on cutting-edge business models that navigate regulatory complexity while promoting greater access to justice. We provide guidance on artificial intelligence implementation in legal services, addressing both the transformative potential and ethical challenges presented by these technologies. Our attorneys have pioneered compliant structures for alternative business arrangements in both traditional and emerging jurisdictions, helping clients develop sustainable competitive advantages through regulatory innovation.

Member Quote: “I work at the intersection of law, finance, and technology because I believe these convergent forces can transform our legal system. By leveraging litigation finance, legal innovation, and AI tools thoughtfully, we can build a more equitable legal landscape where outcomes are determined by merits rather than resources. Every day, I work with visionaries who are dismantling outdated structures and creating something more efficient, accessible, and just. This evolution not only enhances access to justice but also creates compelling investment opportunities in a market ripe for transformation.”

About the author

John Freund

John Freund

Commercial

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Commercial

Commentary Argues Funding Disclosure Bills Would Weaken Small-Business Patent Enforcement

A new opinion piece defends third-party litigation funding as a precondition for small businesses and independent inventors being able to enforce their intellectual property rights, and argues that pending federal disclosure legislation would undercut them.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, the commentary is written by Kristen Osenga, chief policy counselor of the Inventors Defense Alliance and a professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. She frames funding as an access-to-justice question for the innovation economy rather than a question of litigation volume.

The piece points to two measures now before Congress: Representative Darrell Issa's Litigation Transparency Act and Senator Thom Tillis's Tackling Predatory Litigation Funding Act. Osenga argues that mandatory disclosure of funding arrangements would hand well-resourced defendants insight into a plaintiff's financial position and litigation strategy, giving them a means to outlast smaller opponents rather than resolve the merits.

Her economic case rests on the role small firms play in US innovation. Small businesses account for roughly 45% of US GDP, and smaller companies produce approximately 50% more patents per employee than large companies. Without outside capital, she contends, those inventors face infringement by parties who can afford to litigate indefinitely.

The commentary likens litigation funding to the contingency fee arrangement, a long-accepted mechanism for shifting cost risk away from claimants who cannot bear it. "The right to sue is only valuable if you can afford to exercise it," Osenga writes, casting the disclosure debate as one over who retains practical access to the courts.

Commercial

Pogust Goodhead Asks High Court to Rule Client Committee Cannot Remove It From Mariana Dam Case

Pogust Goodhead has escalated its dispute over control of the multi-billion-pound Mariana dam group action against BHP, taking the matter to the High Court rather than accepting the claimant committee's decision to change firms.

As reported by Legal Futures, the firm has applied for declarations that the committee had no contractual authority to terminate its retainer, no authority to direct a change in legal representation, and no authority to prevent it from instructing Quinn Emanuel for the damages phase of the claim.

The committee, made up of 17 members whose identities are confidential, decided in early September to move the claim to Bailey Glasser International, a joint venture between a firm run by former Pogust Goodhead staff and the US firm Bailey & Glasser. Pogust Goodhead had announced in June that it would instruct Quinn Emanuel on damages.

In a statement, the firm said that clients "are being encouraged to walk away from an established litigation structure on the representation that they can simply move to another firm with no material consequences."

The timing raises the stakes considerably. A damages trial listed for 22 weeks is only months away, and the underlying claim has been built on an extensively financed litigation structure whose economics depend on the identity of the firm carrying it to trial. The application asks the court to determine, in effect, who holds the contractual right to control the running of one of the largest group actions in the English courts, and on what terms a claimant committee can override the arrangements that funded it.

Commercial

Burford-Affiliated Investor Pursues $109M Claim Against Alberta Law Firm Over 2018 Funding Agreement

A Delaware investment vehicle closely affiliated with Burford Capital is pursuing a debt claim of roughly $109 million against Alberta lawyer Jeffrey Rath and his firm, Rath & Company, alleging default on a litigation funding agreement first entered into in 2018.

As reported by Global News, Diriba Investments LLC claims the firm defaulted two years ago on financing tied to First Nations and COVID-19 litigation, with the outstanding balance now standing at approximately $108.8 million plus interest and costs. Diriba acts as agent for co-funder Western Springs Investments LP, also a Delaware entity. A 2023 amendment expanded the agreement's scope to cover all claimant-side work at the firm, including First Nations treaty claims and litigation over COVID-19 restrictions.

The alleged breaches include failure to provide monthly reports, failure to keep the funders informed, failure to report or remit proceeds, non-disclosure of client terminations, and the granting of competing security to a separate Delaware entity, Vance SPV LLC. Diriba issued a default notice in November 2024 and, in late July 2026, served a formal demand alongside a notice of intention to enforce security under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act describing the firm as an "insolvent person."

The supporting affidavit was sworn by Paul Mysliwiec, Burford Capital's deputy general counsel, acting as Diriba's authorized representative. Burford did not respond to requests for comment, and Diriba's Calgary counsel declined to comment.

The claim runs alongside separate actions by the Tallcree and Sturgeon Lake First Nations alleging misappropriation of trust funds, a Mareva injunction freezing $8.5 million, and a court-appointed receiver. Diriba is seeking an expanded receivership mandate at a September 14 hearing in Calgary. The allegations have not been proven in court, and Rath denies wrongdoing.