Why litigation funding needs a technological re-boot

At the bleeding edge, artificial intelligence and machine learning are driving a technological revolution in the legal profession, with huge swathes of data being collected and analysed like never before.

However, many funders are making do with existing non-litigation funding market specific tech solutions in the areas of CRM, opportunity and matter management and as a result there are numerous efficiencies to be gained.

Will robots ever be able to predict the outcome of a big money dispute? Maybe, maybe not, but there remains serious value in the data being mined by predictive technology companies so that quantitative analysis may be carried out more effectively.

Such companies use litigation analytics software, powered by AI, to turn data mined from court documents into useful, actionable information for lawyers.

The disputes market is only at the beginning of its technological revolution and one area which is ripe for improvement is litigation finance.

While funders sit on a wealth of data about the sector, there has been little by way of technical innovation in this market. There is also little information about how data is used to inform decisions made by their Investment Committees about which disputes to back.

That is about to change, however, with funders looking at how they can use technology to improve their business models. One example is Apex Litigation Finance, which has recently entered the UK funding market and entered into a partnership with legal AI pioneer CourtQuant.

The aim of this partnership, it said, is to utilise AI analytics as a risk assessment tool for probable litigation outcomes. By reducing the cost of assessing the funding application, the funder can then better decide where it wants to invest its funds, as well as making investing in lower value cases viable.

Many lawyers and their clients believe securing litigation funding to be a convoluted and expensive process. Spending tens of thousands on trying to secure litigation finance can be a hard sell, especially for a client with a limited budget. It often results in a barrier to lawyers putting cases forward to funding and keeps many otherwise viable cases out of the market.

Apex, however, is using the CourtQuant AI to standardise the finance request process. Rather than catering only to a bespoke high-end market, this technology means the funder can make funding decisions on small to medium sized matters, giving it a cost-effective route to market.

It is a great example of the benefits technology can bring to this sector, but further innovation is needed in the litigation finance sector if it is going to remain robust and competitive.

FINLEGAL.IO will give lawyers access to multiple funders simultaneously using a single platform. Put simply you make one application and send it to market with all the supporting case information. After that you can sit back and wait for the responses.

Register for our BETA programme to join others with early access to this ground-breaking platform prior to launch.