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Pinsent Masons Agrees to £25M Litigation Funding Facility with Augusta

Pinsent Masons Agrees to £25M Litigation Funding Facility with Augusta

International law firm Pinsent Masons has agreed an innovative £25m litigation funding facility with the UK’s largest* litigation and disputes funder Augusta Ventures. The unique arrangement offers clients the benefit of a dedicated facility at preferred rates, including a fast-tracked due diligence process and transparent commercial terms.

Under the fair and transparent terms of the agreement, Augusta will fund the entire cost of pursuing the claim, including all lawyer and expert fees and any other costs. The arrangement is “non-recourse” meaning the claimants pay nothing if the claim fails.  Augusta only recovers its costs and fees from sums received from the Defendant or any other paying party.

Mark Roe, leading on Third Party Funding for Pinsent Masons, comments on the driver for the agreement:

“We know that the costs of pursuing a justified claim often deter our clients from obtaining justice and recovering money due to them.  Often, even if clients have funds available, they prefer to invest them in their business rather than in pursuing claims.  We wanted to address that problem.  I believe our arrangement with Augusta will provide Third Party Funding to our clients efficiently, quickly, on clear terms and at lower cost.  We’ve been able to negotiate considerably better terms than our clients would typically receive from Funders if we or they made an individual approach to the market.”

Augusta Managing Director, Louis Young, said:

“We’re delighted to be working with top international firm Pinsent Masons on funding litigation and disputes for their clients. Augusta has built a market leading team and process for enabling access to justice, and we are looking forward to helping Pinsent Masons’ clients secure the support they need to pursue meritorious claims”.

The litigation funding facility is the latest in a series of innovative offerings from the firm.

Alastair Morrison, Head of Client Relationships at Pinsent Masons says:

“Our clients are operating in industries that are experiencing profound change. We’re investing in services that help them to respond to these tectonic shifts, changing our business from an expertise-based law firm into an international professional services business with law at its core. This means that we don’t just apply lawyers to solve clients’ problems; we deploy a wider range of professional disciplines, enabled by process and technology, to collaborate with our clients and others in the legal ecosystem to help them achieve their goals. This arrangement with Augusta is another example of how we seek to respond to our clients’ challenges. “

Within the last three years Pinsent Masons has acquired diversity and inclusion consultant, Brook Graham, expanded its freelance lawyer hub, Vario, into Australia and Asia, and deployed a range of bespoke legal technology solutions built and tailored to client requirements by its 46-strong in-house R&D team.

Notes:

  • Augusta’s funding is deployed in tranches based on key procedural and settlement milestones in the case.
  • A fast-track process for reviewing claims eligible for funding is managed by a joint committee from Pinsent Masons and Augusta.
  • Funding will only be provided if Augusta and Pinsent Masons are satisfied that based on analysis at the date funding is sought the majority of any sums recovered (after payment of Augusta’s funding costs and fees and any insurance premium for potential liability for opponents costs) will go to the client.
  • TPF can be provided at any stage throughout the life of the case, not just at the beginning.
  • In the event of an unsuccessful outcome, Augusta will bear all the costs incurred and any costs payable by the claimant to a successful Defendant will be covered by After the Event (“ATE”) Insurance.
  • If the outcome is a successful resolution of a funded claim, Augusta will be repaid the funds deployed, plus a success fee based on the amount of funds deployed at date of resolution.  The level of fee is dependent on the time taken to make a recovery.
  • This framework is intended to facilitate settlement as the amount that a client repays is based solely on the tranches of funds deployed at the date of resolution and the sooner the case settles the less the success fee.
  • Pinsent Masons does not receive any commission or other payment  from Augusta as part of this arrangement

About Augusta

Augusta is the largest litigation and dispute funding institution in the UK* – with £150m of capital and a team of 70 in London our scale enables us to make decisions in market-leading timeframes and fund cases of any size.

*=by number of cases.

About Pinsent Masons

Pinsent Masons is a global 100 law firm, specialising particularly in the energy, infrastructure, financial services, real estate and advanced manufacturing and technology sectors. The firm employs over 3000 people worldwide, including around 1500 lawyers and more than 400 partners. The firm’s international footprint encompasses seven offices across Asia Pacific, two offices in the Middle East, six offices in continental Europe and one in Africa. The firm also has comprehensive coverage across each of the UK’s three legal jurisdictions.

  • Pinsent Masons LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England & Wales (registered number: OC333653) authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and by the appropriate regulatory body in the other jurisdictions in which it operates. The word ‘partner’, used in relation to the LLP, refers to a member of the LLP or an employee or consultant of the LLP or any affiliated firm who is a lawyer with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of the members of the LLP, and of those non-members who are designated as partners, is displayed at the LLP’s registered office: 30 Crown Place, London EC2A 4ES, United Kingdom.
  • We use ‘Pinsent Masons’ to refer to Pinsent Masons LLP and affiliated entities that practise under the name ‘Pinsent Masons’ or a name that incorporates those words. Reference to ‘Pinsent Masons’ is to Pinsent Masons LLP and/or one or more of those affiliated entities as the context requires. © Pinsent Masons LLP 2017.
  • Pinsent Masons office network extends across the major international business centres of London, Dublin, Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Madrid, Paris, Doha, Dubai, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Johannesburg, Sydney Melbourne and Perth – and the key commercial centres in the UK.
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By John Freund |

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Sentry Funding’s free tool enabling litigators to instantly search the funding market on behalf of clients has been expanded.

Sentry’s free ‘decision in principle’ feature enables lawyers to evidence to clients that they have conducted a broad market search, even if funding is not ultimately taken out.

Having deployed £125m in funding across a range of case types, Sentry now has access to an even broader funding marketplace, covering 34 global jurisdictions. Finance is provided by 13 funders, five of which are members of the Association of Litigation Funders.

With the recent addition of Sentry’s first US-based funder, the US offering will now be expanding over the next few months. 

A faster process

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  • The commercial marketplace has been redeveloped with 63 new data points added to the funder criteria matrix - improving the accuracy of case / funder matching
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Tom Webster, chief executive officer at Sentry Funding, said:

‘By broadening our reach and speeding up the process, we’re making it even easier for lawyers to raise funding. We’re also giving litigators an easy way to show clients they have fully researched the market, rather than just approaching one or two funders. 

‘The service is free to use, so even if clients decide they do not ultimately want funding or if none is available for that case, for the lawyer, it makes sense to use our “decision in principle” feature, so they can put evidence on file that they did check the market.’

Sentry Funding is an SaaS (software as a service) technology provider that gives solicitors access to a diverse marketplace of litigation funders. It works with solicitors, funders and third-party providers to ensure claimants are getting the most efficient service for their funding needs. 

The Sentry Portal also acts as a case management system that runs a transparent digital case file for solicitors, funders, after-the-event insurance providers, barristers, cost lawyers and other relevant third parties.