A Craig Wasserman ’86/Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Alumni Breakfast.
Breakfast will be available at 7:30 a.m. The program will begin promptly at 8:00 a.m. and end promptly at 9:20 a.m.
The YLS Office of Alumni Engagement and Development will send invitations to alumni in the New York metropolitan area.
We are delighted to invite you to attend an Alumni Breakfast in New York on “Commercial Litigation Funding: How Does it Affect the Litigation Landscape?”.
Civil litigation is expensive and, absent specific contractual or statutory entitlements, plaintiffs incur and are required to pay legal fees as their cases progress to trial. Plaintiffs therefore often abandon meritorious claims, as they cannot afford to pursue them to judgment. Perceiving a market inefficiency, third-party funders have increasingly viewed certain commercial lawsuits as a new financial asset class, deploying significant capital to plaintiffs or their counsel on a non-recourse basis in exchange for shares in any plaintiff recovery. Westfleet Advisors estimated that $15.2 billion in assets were allocated by funders to U.S. commercial litigation in 2023, a year in which the market contracted, while the Government Accounting Office estimated that new financing agreements were worth $2.8 billion in 2021 alone. Some of these estimates do not include alternative resources for litigation funding, including, for example, contingent risk policies offered as specialty insurance.
As commercial litigation funding has become big business, it has also become the subject of vigorous debate across the bar, in legislatures, and among the judiciary. Proponents of such funding note that it enhances access to justice and promotes vetting to identify meritorious claims, while detractors emphasize the lack of transparency into funding arrangements and uncertainty regarding control. Commentators have also noted that litigation funding is increasingly integral to the business models of many, and perhaps even most, law firms, with implications for the types of claims that are being brought and pursued in court and potentially the quality of legal representation.
Please join our distinguished panelists for an in-depth discussion on the evolution of commercial litigation funding, including its key challenges and opportunities, as well as the latest developments shaping the market.
Maria Glover, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Andrei Iancu, Partner and Co-Head of Intellectual Property and Technology Litigation Group, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and former Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
William C. Marra, Director, Certum Group
Roberta Romano ’80, YLS Sterling Professor of Law and Center Co-Director, will welcome the audience. Victoria Cundiff ’80, Steering Committee, Sedona Conference Working Group 12 on Trade Secrets Law, YLS Visiting Lecturer in Law, and Center Fellow, will moderate this discussion.
All discussion at the Alumni Breakfast is subject to the YLS Center for the Study of Corporate Law Program Rules.
CLE Credit Available:
Yale Law School has been certified by the New York State Continuing Legal Education Board as an Accredited Provider of CLE programs. One and one half (1.5) CLE credit hours in Professional Practice will be available for this program, which is appropriate for both newly admitted and experienced attorneys. Preregistration is required for CLE credit. You must be present for the entire program to receive CLE credit; we cannot give partial CLE credit for partial attendance. Program reading materials will be available by Friday, April 24th on the Alumni Breakfast page.