A fledgling litigation-finance firm’s new chief financial officer once worked for one of its earliest investment backers. Legalist Inc., which focuses on backing small civil lawsuits, has hired Sean Liu as its new chief financial officer.
Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.
The growing list of litigation funding companies normally sees investment banking types setting up funds. But in the case of litigation startup Legalist the founder is a 23 year old Harvard dropout – just the sort of person to attract the attention of venture capital funders like Peter Thiel.
Legalist founder Eva Shang founded the company with classmate Christian Haigh (pictured) – another dropout – and have jointly delivered what they claim to be the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered litigation funding company.
Techcrunch reported that the company had raised $100 million in its second funding round, roughly 10 times what the company raised a couple of years ago in its first round.
The AI-powered funder, initially backed by startup incubator Y Combinator says it has financed 38 cases so far of which half have received settlements and 80 per cent were positive, according to a Techcrunch interview with Shang.
Both Shang and Haigh had taken a two year, $200,000 Peter Thiel scholarship to drop out of college in order to devote themselves to projects that held high potential. Thiel, a joint US-New Zealand citizen and investors in major ventures like Facebook and Paypal, has long advocated the advantages of bright students to leave the restrictive environment of college to develop and innovate new ideas.
Read the full article on the Law Fuel.
Legalist, a San Francisco-based litigation finance company started by two Harvard University dropouts and advised by retired 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, has just raised $100 million, which it will use to fund plaintiffs in 100-200 commercial cases over the next two years.
Legalist scrapes federal and state court records and then uses algorithms to predict case outcomes and determine the best cases in which to invest. It invests exclusively in mid-market cases that require less than $1 million in funding.
Litigants (or their attorneys) apply for funding and, if approved, Legalist covers all litigation costs, including attorneys’ fees, deposition costs and working capital for a business. Repayment comes only if a case results in recovery.
“Legalist leads the new wave of technologists using artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline and underwrite litigation investments,” says the company’s website. “Our proprietary technology has been recognized by leading publications as revolutionizing the way plaintiffs interact with the justice system.”
Legalist raised $10.25 million in 2017 for what it describes as its Fund I and used that to fund 38 cases. The $100 million raise, Fund II, includes institutional investors such as insurance companies, endowments and fund-of-funds.
Two Harvard students, Eva Shang and Christian Haigh, formed Legalist in 2016, originally planning to create a site that would rate lawyers based on publicly available court records. Later that year, after receiving a $100,000 fellowship from the Thiel foundation and then participating in the Y Combinator accelerator program, they pivoted their company to focus on litigation finance.
Read the full article on the Lawsites.
Legalist, a FinTech startup and Y Combinator alumni, has just announced that it has completed a $100m venture round to help people finance their lawsuits.
Litigation finance essentially means that companies and private people can fund plaintiffs and law firms in cases where it looks like they are going to win. If they do, then the backers can expect good return on their capital injection.
Legalist has set up a platform to enable the people to back cases. Attorneys bring the company cases and then algorithms takes them through the due diligence process. So far it has funded 38 cases, according to an interview with the founders conducted by TechCrunch.
The new $10m round was raised through non-profit endowments, family offices and institutional investors. Legalist plans to use the money over the next five years and expect to fund between 100 and 200 cases.
Legalist reportedly raised $10m in its maiden fund back in 2017.
Read the full article on the Fintech Global.
If you haven’t heard much about litigation finance, that may change soon. The practice dates back decades, though it’s been picking up momentum since 2006, when Credit Suisse Securities founded a litigation risk strategies unit that it later spun off.
What is litigation finance? In a nutshell, the idea is to fund plaintiffs and law firms in cases where it looks like there will be a winning ruling. When everything goes the right way, the capital that helps fund the lawsuits is returned — and then some — in return for the risk taken. Litigation finance firms — and there’s a growing number of them — basically want to estimate as accurately as possible the risk involved so they can bet on the right horses.
Interestingly, one of the newest entrants onto the scene wasn’t founded by career attorneys or spun out of a hedge fund or private equity group. Instead it’s a young, 11-person company called Legalist that’s run by a 23-year-old Harvard dropout named Eva Shang, who co-founded the company with her college classmate Christian Haigh, who also dropped out.
As interestingly, the pair, who say they honed the idea as part of a Y Combinator batch in 2016, just secured $100 million to put it to work. That’s roughly 10 times the $10.2 million they raised for a first fund that tested out their ability to find and finance civil lawsuits that pay.
We talked with Shang late last week to learn more about the new fund, which was raised from nonprofit endowments, family offices and institutional investors (including an insurance company) and that’s styled like a private-equity fund with a traditional management fee and carry structure.
Read the full article on the Tech Crunch.
Good morning! Outside of lawyers and the gawkers who populate courtroom galleries looking for entertainment, few people look forward to court appearances and all the prep work that legal actions entail. But a rising class of investors are finding ways to cash in, or at least try to, on civil litigation that increasingly clogs judicial dockets. As WSJ Pro’s Will Louch reports, one of the latest entrants in the litigation finance market has just closed on $100 million of commitments for its newest fund—almost 10 times more than the firm raised with its debut vehicle in 2017. The key for Legalist Inc.’s fundraising success may be the technology it has developed to sort out which cases to back. Read more below.
In Southeast Asia, TPG Capital is reported to be part of a group that has agreed to buy hospital assets in the region owned by Columbia Pacific Management Inc. for around $1.2 billion, the Journal’s P.R. Venkat and Yantoultra Ngui report, citing people familiar with the process. TPG is partnering in the deal with Malaysian conglomerate Hong Leong Group.
Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.
Legalist Inc., a litigation finance startup founded by two Harvard College dropouts, has closed on $100 million for its second fund.
The firm raised the money largely from institutional investors, including endowments and insurance companies, to source and finance civil lawsuits that require less than $1 million in funding.
Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.
A startup that uses algorithms to find and finance civil lawsuits has raised a first fund of $10.25 million. Legalist Inc., founded by two Harvard dropouts, started out offering litigation analytics for lawyers, then started financing suits itself. The five-person San Francisco-based startup has already funded and seen profits from a few cases.
Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.
Christian Haigh, 23 Eva Shang, 21, Cofounders, Legalist
Legalist funds lawsuits by small companies, using a proprietary algorithm to decide which cases to invest in based on the likelihood of victory and how long the case could run. Cofounders Eva Shang and Christian Haigh, Harvard dropouts who developed their concept at the startup incubator Y Combinator, raised a $10.25 million fund this summer to bankroll cases.
Read the full article on Forbes.