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Commercial People Moves

How Qian Julie Wang’s Upbringing as an Undocumented Immigrant Informed Her Legal Career

By John Freund |

For the keynote address of the LF Dealmakers conference, Validity Finance Founder and CEO Ralph Sutton, introduced NY Times Best-Selling Author and Civil Rights Litigator, Qian Julie Wang. Her memoir, Beautiful Country, was ranked a best book of 2021 by the New York Times, and has been well-reviewed by many distinguished outlets.

Ms. Wang began by sharing her ‘most humiliating story’ from Big Law. She began her carer at a top-5 firm as a hungry summer associate eager to prove herself at this white-shoe law firm. She noticed that partners and associates kept coming to her asking her to take on various assignments, and didn’t realize that she should select which ones to work on, so she said yes to each offer, so quickly found herself working on 10 major litigation cases.

For the next month, Ms. Wang skipped all of the orientation, lunches, outings, and buried her head in WestLaw doing research. It turns out, one of the training sessions she missed was quite important–because a senior partner at the firm called her into his office and asked her what the hell she had been doing for five weeks?

Ms. Wang hadn’t been billing any of her research time, because she had missed the training session that explained that part of the process. So the vast majority of her work went un-billed.

Through some self reflection, Ms. Wang realized that her problem stemmed from her belief that she didn’t belong. Her very first job was age 7 at a sweatshop in Chinatown, as an undocumented immigrant, and here she was in a fancy white-shoe law firm. She had spent her life afraid of anyone in a uniform, afraid they might be out to deport her. And so when she got her summer associate job at the law firm, she brought that insecurity in the door with her.

Ms Wang described her family’s suffering under the Communist takeover of China, how they were imprisoned and tortured for reading banned books. She came to admire two Americans she read about–Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Thurgood Marshall. That was when she decided to become a lawyer, when she eventually came to America.

However, like many lawyers, she fell into the trap of focusing just on the compensation. She billed and billed so many hours that she lost her sense of purpose. It wasn’t until she started writing her memoir, Beautiful Country, that she re-discovered the reason she became a lawyer in the first place. She realized that the little girl who had grown up working in a sweatshop dreamed of being a lawyer so she could help people, and here years later she had achieved that dream, but the allure of those billable hours had caused her to lose the plot.

Ms. Wang took a sharp turn and decided to focus her efforts on helping marginalized communities. Her work now helps her find her way back to the child she was, and provides a sense of fulfillment about her career that she never previously experienced.

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John Freund

John Freund

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Announcements Commercial People Moves

ALFA Welcomes Mackay Chapman as Newest Associate Member

By Harry Moran |

In a post on LinkedIn, The Association of Litigation Funders of Australia (ALFA) announced that it is welcoming Mackay Chapman as its newest Associate Member. Mackay Chapman becomes the 12th Associate Member of ALFA, following the inclusion of Litica in April of this year.

Mackay Chapman is a boutique legal and advisory firm, specialising in high-stakes regulatory, financial services and insolvency disputes. The Melbourne-based law firm was founded in 2016 by Dan Maclay and Michael Chapman, who bring 25 years of experience in complex disputes to the business.More information about Mackay Chapman can be found on its website.

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Case Developments Commercial

Deminor Announces Settlement in Danish OW Bunker Case

By Harry Moran |

An announcement from Deminor Litigation Funding revealed that a settlement has been reached in the OW Bunker action in Demark, which Deminor funded litigation brought by a group of 20 institutional investors against the investment banks Carnegie and Morgan Stanley.

This is part of a wider group of actions originating from OW Bunker’s 2014 bankruptcy, which led to significant financial losses for both company creditors and shareholders who had invested in the company. These other cases were brought against several defendants, including OW Bunker and its former management and Board of Directors, Altor Fund II, and the aforementioned investment banks.

The settlement provides compensation for plaintiffs across the four legal actions, with a total value of approximately 645 million DKK, including legal costs. The settlement agreement requires the parties to ‘waive any further claims against each other relating to OW Bunker’. Deminor’s announcement makes clear that ‘none of the defendants have acknowledged any legal responsibility in the group of linked cases in connection with the settlement.’

Charles Demoulin, Chief Investment Officer of Deminor, said that “the settlement makes it possible for our clients to benefit from a reasonable compensation for their losses”, and that they were advising the client “to accept this solution which represents a better alternative to continuing the litigation with the resulting uncertainties.” Joeri Klein, General Counsel Netherlands and Co-head Investment Recovery of Deminor, said that the settlement had demonstrated that “in Denmark it has now proven to be possible to find a balanced solution to redress investor related claims.”

Case Developments Commercial

Burford German Funding Sued Over Hausfeld Ownership Stake

By Harry Moran |

The ownership or funding of law firms by litigation funders continues to be a hot topic in the world of legal funding, with models such as alternative business structures (ABS) gaining momentum in places like Arizona. However, a complaint filed by a client in Delaware reveals a falling out due to the reverse funding model, where a law firm maintained an ownership stake in the funder.

Reporting by Bloomberg Law covers a new lawsuit brought against Burford German Funding (BGF), an affiliate of Burford Capital, by a client who claims that the funder failed to disclose the fact that BGF was partly owned by the same law firm it nominated to lead the client’s antitrust cases. Financialright Claims GMBH (FRC) alleges that when it negotiated the funding agreement with BGF for its antitrust litigation against the trucks cartel, it had no knowledge “that Hausfeld  was  also  a  part  owner  of  BGF  through  an  entity  called German Litigation Solutions LLC (“GLS”) or that one of the lead German partners at Hausfeld responsible for the firm’s representation of FRC had a personal stake.”

The complaint, filed by FRC in the Delaware Superior Court, explains that as Hausfeld is part-owner of BGF, and the funding agreement “provides for a share of FRC’s recoveries in the Trucks Litigations to flow to FRC’s lawyers”, this constitutes a contingency fee arrangement which are illegal under German law.  FRC had filed a lawsuit against Hausfeld in a German court and then applied for discovery from BGF, Burford and GLS in the Delaware District Court, which was followed by an assertion by these parties that the application for discovery “is subject to mandatory arbitration” under the terms of the funding agreement.

FRC argues that “as  a  direct  result  of  BGF’s  fraud  on  FRC,  FRC  did  agree  to  the Arbitration Agreement that—according to BGF—subsumes disputes between FRC and GLS.” However, FRC claims that it “would  never  have  agreed  to  an  arbitration  clause  requiring  it  to arbitrate claims against Hausfeld”, were it not for the concealment of Hausfeld’s ownership stake in BGF. FRC is therefore asking the Superior Court to declare that “BGF fraudulently induced  FRC  into  agreeing  to  the  Arbitration  Agreement”, and that the agreement should be declared both invalid and unenforceable.

Lisa Sharrow, spokesperson at Hausfeld LLP, provided the following statement:  “The US-based Hausfeld LLP and the UK-based Hausfeld & Co LLP hold indirect economic minority interests in Burford German Funding. These are separate legal entities from Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte LLP that do not practice law in Germany. Burford German Funding was of course developed and set up in a way that was fully compliant with all relevant regulations.”

David Helfenbein, spokesperson at Burford, also provided a response to Bloomberg via email: “There is a dispute in Germany between a client Burford has funded and its lawyers. Burford is not a party to that dispute and its outcome has no impact on us. This Delaware proceeding is a third-party discovery request to Burford for material for the German litigation, which Burford believes should be adjudicated in arbitration and not in the Delaware courts.”

The full complaint filed by FRC can be read here.

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