By

It’s all hands to the pump at TheJudge as we have just received our highest ever volume of commercial litigation and arbitration ATE insurance applications in one day.

There has been an increasing rise in referral volumes over the past few months, but we’re currently at an all time high. Clearly, the last few weeks of recoverable ATE insurance premiums have encouraged litigation lawyers to consider their caseloads and make urgent applications to try and ensure their clients benefit from the existing rules.

Demand for litigation funding is also significantly higher than the previous quarter.

While there is unquestionably a certain volume of applications being made as a direct consequence of the forthcoming rule changes, the vast majority of applications are in relation to sizeable commercial disputes which will still require ATE insurance and/or litigation funding regardless as to whether insurers and funders can complete their due diligence before 1st April 2013.

“It is clear that litigators are now focusing on their funding arrangements more intensely than ever. When it comes to litigation funding, there is no safer way to secure competitive terms than to undertake an informed search of the market.

Lawyers are increasingly asking us to identify a variety of different structures for their clients when it comes to utilising external litigation funding. It’s rare for there to only be one approach or option for any given case. We always aim to remove the complexity for the client when understanding how deals can be structured to their advantage.

Furthermore, with increasing pressures on lawyers to stay within budgets, the last thing they need to do is waste their client’s funds trying to keep up with the real time developments in the litigation funding and ATE insurance market.

Save for some rare instances (please see our application fees policy for detail), we typically do not charge any application fees in relation to commercial litigation or arbitration. However, due to high demand and the fact that clients’ positions are often prejudiced where the case has already been rejected by some ATE insurers or litigation funders in the market, we are having to be more realistic as to whether we will accept an engagement if the client or lawyer has already attempted to secure litigation funding or insurance prior to TheJudge’s involvement.

There are statistics to support our confidence that we have a higher conversion rate for arranging litigation funding than any other company in the business. We act as agent for the client and treat their application as if it were our own.” – Matthew Amey, Director

If you have a commercial dispute (including commercial litigtaion or arbitration) that you wish to discuss with a member of our broking team, please contact us.