The results reflect the growing norm of litigation funding. Forty percent of respondents have had firsthand experience working with a litigation finance firm. Interestingly, law firms with the most experience using litigation finance were the very largest and very smallest firms surveyed: law firm size of 500+ lawyers (48.57%) and law firm size of 2 – 5 lawyers (58.54%). Litigators whose practice concerns the energy industry had the highest proportion of firsthand experience followed by the technology sector; finance/banking had the lowest. A resounding 85% of those with firsthand litigation finance experience would use it again.

For those without firsthand experience, the most commonly cited reason for ruling out the possibility of litigation finance by nearly 75% of negative respondents was “ethical reservations.” We’d like to address those reservations with a primer on the ethics of litigation finance.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on litigation finance hosted by the Association of Business Trial Lawyers in Ojai, California. The audience was engaged and asked a variety of questions, including many on ethical considerations related to litigation finance. Since this topic seems to be top of mind for lawyers when it comes to litigation finance, we offer the following sample Q&A: