Funding disputes

When conversation turns into conflict, you need a legal team with the experience and expertise to protect your interests and achieve swift, commercially realistic results in the most cost efficient and risk free manner possible.

Clients ranging from individuals and entrepreneurs to corporations and multi-national organisations trust our commercial litigation lawyers, based in Kent, to deliver results for them in even the most complex of cases. We make it a point to get to know our clients, to understand their objectives thoroughly, provide clear advice and commercially minded recommendations in plain English, and to make ourselves available whenever and wherever our clients need us.

Our commercial litigation lawyers specialise in helping settle disputes using mediation, arbitration and other ADR approaches, but are equally skilled and experienced in fighting our clients’ corner in court where necessary. We can also offer risk management and litigation avoidance advice, to help stop issues developing into full disputes.

Funding disputes can be a challenge. We recognise that whether bringing or defending a claim, businesses and individuals alike want to achieve positive outcomes, as cost effectively as possible.

Managing the downside risk of dealing with a dispute, particularly if court proceedings are commenced, is also of paramount importance. This is because there is always a risk, no matter how small, of losing the case and the investment you have made in it, and being required to pay a proportion of your opponent’s costs.

We can advise you on a range of potential funding, risk sharing and insurance options, to help address these concerns. The options available will depend on the type of dispute you are involved in, and the forum best suited to resolving it, but can include:

• Standard, private paying arrangements, where you pay our fees and any expenses we incur on your behalf as the case progresses, on the basis of estimates or fixed fees, agreed with you in advance
• Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs) where our fees are discounted in full or in part as the case proceeds. If the case is won, you then also pay us the amount of the reduction applied, plus a success fee. If the case is lost, you do not have to pay the discount applied to our fees, or any success fee; your liability for our fees is limited to what you have paid (if anything) along the way. You would still need to pay any expenses we incur on your behalf under a CFA, though, whether or not the case is successful
• After the event insurance (ATE Insurance), which protects you against the risk of having to pay your opponent’s legal costs if your claim is unsuccessful. Many ATE Insurance policies also include cover to reimburse you for any expenses you have incurred if the case is lost. ATE Insurance can sit alongside a CFA to significantly reduce the overall cost and risk of pursuing a claim. Some insurers will agree to defer all or part of the policy premium until the conclusion of the case, but the premiums can be expensive
• Third party funding schemes, where a professional funder will finance some or all of your fees and all of your expenses, including the cost of ATE Insurance, in exchange for a proportion of the recovery made. This type of scheme is usually only suitable if you are bringing a claim for financial compensation
• Contingency fees, where you would not be charged our fees in full or in part if you lose, but if you are successful, our fees would amount to a percentage of what is recovered (plus any reduced fee we had agreed to charge as the case went along). Again, this type of arrangement is only suitable if you are seeking financial compensation, and unlike third party funding schemes, contingency fee arrangements cannot be used where court proceedings are issued.