Legalist closed a $415 million fund dedicated to backing lawsuits, the tech-powered litigation funder said Tuesday.

California-based Legalist’s fourth and largest fund deepens its investment in commercial legal assets, continuing to focus on single cases and portfolios. The funder also nearly doubled its assets under management in the past year, now managing $2 billion across all of its strategies.

“When we launched in litigation finance, we were very much a niche underdog, and I like to think that we have preserved that status over the years, even though we’ve grown and our strategy has grown as well,” said Legalist co-founder and general partner Eva Shang.

The company, which has around 40 full-time employees and also operates a $500 million government receivables fund aimed at contractors, is celebrating 10 years in the litigation finance space. After dropping out of Harvard, Shang co-founded Legalist in 2016 with the help of a $100,000 grant from billionaire Peter Thiel’s foundation. She passed the bar exam following four years of an apprentice-style legal education—called “reading the law”—and is now also a licensed attorney.

Legalist specializes in funding low- to mid-range value cases ranging from $50,000 to $5 million in investment, which Shang says have fewer issues with lengthy case durations. Its prior fund was $300 million and had more than 250 positions in single and portfolio cases. The company’s book right now is nearly a 50/50 split between single cases and portfolios.

Read the full article on Bloomberg Law.

From the moment he became de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk seemed intent on carving up the federal bureaucracy like a Thanksgiving turkey. Thousands of federal employees were laid off, entire departments folded, and contracts worth billions of dollars were scrapped.

That mayhem created a lucrative opening for one startup.

In the first half of this year, Legalist, a San Francisco lender founded by one of tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s fellows, extended more than $100 million to dozens of government contractors scrambling for cash. Founder Eva Shang says that’s about twice what it deployed in the three years since launching its government business.

Read the full article on the Business Insider.

College dropout, hedge-fund CEO and sporadic blogger Eva Shang ’17 is interested in the idea of a diamond-shaped life. “In the latter half of our lives, our options and possibilities narrow in on themselves, but in the first half of your life — especially when you’re in middle school, high school, college, or your early 20s — the world is opening itself up to you.”

Shang arrived at the red-brick dormitories of Harvard Yard from the peaceful suburbs of Philadelphia. On campus, she founded the Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Reform and tutored at prisons across Massachusetts. Though she spent much of her time at Harvard advocating for prisoners’ rights, she was hesitant about pursuing this passion professionally.

To Shang, Harvard was the base of a forking path. She could work in the public sector and be forever “rabble-rousing on the outside,” or she could attend seminars at the Charles Hotel to schmooze with recruiters over free food and eventually sign to a high-paying job in the corporate world.

Read the full article on The Harvard Crimson.