European Litigation Funders Association
About Litigation Funding
Organizations finance many aspects of their businesses. Commercial litigation funding (or legal finance) is corporate finance for and dependent on litigation. It recognizes that a meritorious claim is a financial asset with value that can be unlocked as cash by specialist financiers.
For those organizations and persons with limited resources, litigation funding facilitates access to justice ensuring that disputes are resolved based on the merits-and not based on who has the bigger legal budget. Typically, a commercial legal finance provider will pay the fees and expenses associated with the pursuit of a claim or will advance a portion of the value of the pending claim, in exchange for a portion of the recovery of the judgment or award if the matter is successful.
Core Mission
Over the last three decades, organizations and persons around the world have increasingly sought third-party capital to offset the costs of pursuing expensive meritorious litigation. This demand has fueled the growth of the commercial legal finance industry, which is now sufficiently large to require an association of leading commercial legal finance companies to protect the interests of those who rely on their services.
ELFA’s core mission is to:
- be the continental European voice of the commercial legal finance industry.
- represent the interests of the industry with respect to legislative and regulatory matters, including through responses to policy proposals and consultations by government bodies and European organizations and professional associations.
- expand public knowledge in Europe by serving as a clearinghouse of relevant information, research and data about the uses and applications of litigation funding.
- establish general principles of conduct for the commercial legal finance industry and promote best practices in the field, ensuring that litigation funders follow the same institutional standards and processes clients expect of their other finance partners.
- promote better understanding of the industry.
- monitor and, where appropriate, intervene in litigation where questions related to the industry are before courts or other adjudicative bodies.
- support the industry’s significant social benefit of ensuring that disputes are resolved based on the merits-and not based on who has the bigger legal budget.
Membership
- ELFA’s founding members are Deminor, Nivalion and Omni Bridgeway.
- Membership is open to any professional commercial legal finance firm that satisfies the association’s membership criteria, and it is anticipated the association’s membership will grow in the coming years.
- ELFA’s members are those who have invested (deployed) significant capital, as opposed to just promised or committed. Members must provide a quasi-contractual statement to ELFA leadership about their operations.
- The founding members created the initial organisational infrastructure for ELFA and the Association’s structure is dynamic and evolving.
- ELFA is not a punitive or regulatory group. It is a collective of like-minded professionals from the litigation funding industry whose Management Committee is formed by representatives from the original founding companies.
