Third party funding

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.

We can advise on the litigation financing solutions that are available from a range of specialist third party funders, to help businesses and individuals meet the cost of bringing claims for compensation.

Typically, your claim will need to have a value of at least £500,000, to ensure that you receive a large enough proportion of any damages to make taking the action worthwhile.

However, funding can be obtained fora portfolio of lower value claims that, collectively, have a value which make them economic to fund. Funding can provide funding to meet the cost of high value, complex and heavyweight litigation, too.

Most types of claims for damages are eligible to apply, except for personal injury or clinical negligence claims.

The starting point is the same as for any dispute – does your case have a good chance of success, and can the opponent afford to pay the amount of your claim and costs? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, litigation funding and costs insurance could be available.

If your case qualifies, we can help assess the different ways in which the funding can be structured. This could include helping to secure funding for all of your legal costs, including our fees, court fees, barrister’s fees and any expert’s fees, so you would not have to pay anything at all as the case proceeds.

Depending on the nature of the case, however, it may be preferable for you to make a contribution to the case costs, and for us to put some of our fees at risk. In this scenario, we would work under a Partial Conditional Fee Agreement (PCFA) meaning that a percentage, say 60% of our fees, are paid as the case progresses and 40% are only paid if the case is successful.

Under this type of arrangement you would have to pay no more than half of the 60% PCFA fees as the case progresses. The other half would be paid by the funder, as well as all of the other litigation costs, such as court fees, barrister’s fees, and expert’s fees.

We can help you to arrange insurance to cover your liability to pay the opponent’s costs, should the claim fail. Insurance can also be taken to cover any costs you have paid under a PCFA, if applicable.

If the claim is unsuccessful and you have complied with the insurance policy, the insurer would pay for any adverse costs and any PCFA fees you have paid, up to the limit of the cover. Provided you have complied with the funding agreement, you would not have to repay the funds that the funder has provided.

This means that your overall costs risk would be limited to any uninsured amount of the opponent’s costs you are ordered to pay, and the uninsured amount of any PCFA fees you have paid, as opposed to the normal risk of having to pay all of your own costs and around 70% of the opponent’s costs.

If you are successful, the damages awarded at trial, or from any settlement sum negotiated, will be used to cover any deferred PCFA costs and all the costs of the litigation funding, including the success fee that applies under our PCFA, and to the funding Augusta has provided.

The exact percentages will vary from case to case, but most funders aim to ensure that you will receive at least 50% of the net damages or settlement sum, as part of its eligibility assessment.

This form of litigation funding means that you can pursue a damages claim at a fraction of the usual upfront cost, and the downside risk of losing can be reduced to virtually nothing, or a very small percentage of the total costs of bringing the case.

It is intended, therefore, not just for claimants who cannot afford to meet the cost of pursuing a good claim, but also for those claimants who do not wish to put their own resources at risk.