Insights

Though perhaps overused, we hope the Stanley Cup Finals offer sufficient cover to quote the famous Wayne Gretzky line: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."

No doubt, investors continue to be intrigued by the promise of high risk-adjusted returns with limited correlation to the broader markets. So are we. With that said, and as it relates to law firm loans made to mass tort attorneys, there is a question that seems to quietly echo through investment committees of the most well initiated in the space: how many of these loans will perform without having to be refinanced? Indeed, one may sense an implicitly understood game of musical chairs growing in amplitude with ever-ballooning loan sizes driven by re-financed exits. The music, for now, plays on... 

The team at Greenpoint Capital Management is sensitive to the fact many of those reading this have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. We are living in times of unprecedented uncertainty. In the face of these generational events, no doubt many of us are reflecting on questions and assumptions that extend far beyond capital markets…

“Litigation Finance” is a broad term for various types of investments that fund participants in the civil justice system. While these investments can theoretically take the form of any security, they are typically fairly vanilla in nature, most often taking the form of a credit or credit-like structure. The investment thesis supporting modern litigation funders represents a paradigm shift that recognizes legal claims as assets with value that can support capital investment. Given annual revenue in the legal services industry exceeds $430 billion, there has never been a better time to explore the space either as an investor or consumer of capital

Reasonable access to have a legal claim or defense heard in court is guaranteed by the United States Constitution. However, given the high costs of litigation - including attorney fees, court fees, and depositions - many still contend that the U.S. judicial system is rigged to favor the wealthy. The need for capital to fund litigation may cause undercapitalized plaintiffs to defer or ultimately abandon legal recourse. Within this environment, it may be posited that access to capital, rather than access to the courts, distorts legal outcomes.