For some years now, litigation funding has been recognised and endorsed by the legislatures and judiciary in many jurisdictions as delivering a key social good: access to justice.
In 2009, Lord Justice Jackson conducted a review of the costs of civil litigation in England. The Jackson Report that followed gave a favourable, profile-raising view of litigation funders and the role they could play in promoting access to justice. In 2017, the UK government confirmed that it had no plans to introduce any special regulation to govern the litigation funding market.
Given the modern public policy approach to the funding of litigation and arbitration, it is increasingly attracting very significant amounts of investment capital from large and sophisticated investors such as hedge funds, private equity houses and high net worth individuals.
Litigation and arbitration investment is uncorrelated to stock or bond markets, and its attractiveness will only increase in a post-pandemic world.
