Will the alternative become the norm?

This is the first in a two-part series of articles looking at the subject of litigation funding. In this article, we examine the current landscape for alternative fee arrangements and third party funding, outside of the traditional hourly rate. In Pt 2, we will consider what is on the horizon and ask whether these kinds of fee arrangements spell the end of the hourly rate fee structure.

The context is, of course, the implementation of the Jackson reforms in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) which was supposed to herald a change in the ways parties funded litigation and how litigation lawyers looked at litigation funding more generally.

However, even though those changes have been in place for over two years, for significant commercial cases there is evidence that the sea-change has not happened and even leading firms are hesitant to engage