Monday 16 July 2012

Lawsuit Financing- why and how

If you are involved in litigation, you need a huge amount of currency to deal with all the expenses involved irrespective of your being fair. Accidents and malpractices are very common these days and anyone can get trapped in such a situation. These involve personal as well as financial losses of both the parties. May be you are not prepared for such a situation and all of your savings may not be enough for you to cope up with these expenses.

In such a situation, litigation financing can be a life saver for you. These are the companies which provide you finance to fight the case. Anybody can take advantage of these financiers. When you are involved in litigation, you may have to spend money to work out the case, hire a lawyer, and settle court dues and many other unthinkable charges. You can decide to wait till the time of settlement, but sometimes you may not get a fair settlement in the end.

These funding companies provide you cash advances even before the court cases are settled. The worst situation you can imagine is losing the case and getting nothing upon the settlement. In that case, you may lose from the court, but you have to pay back nothing to the litigation finance providing company. These financers first study the case thoroughly and evaluate it for its worthiness. Based upon the evaluation, the members of the financing company fix an amount as the pre- settlement charges. This amount is given to the client in advance and is recovered by him if and only if the client wins the case. If he loses the case, the lawsuit loan providers do not ask for the recovery of their money. Even if the case is settled with a very small amount given to the client, the company is not reimbursed.

Choosing a financing company:

All litigation funding companies are different in the ways they decide the pre- settlement amount and charge interest on it. It is obvious that these companies take a lot of risk while investing in the lawsuits. Thus they have high interest rates to make- up for the cases that they lose. Some companies also use a multiplier instead of charging an interest on the money. Also there may be some additional charges implemented to the client on the success of the case. These include application fees, documentation fees and other charges which are also there in other types of loans. So a person getting the help of a litigation financing company should be aware of these charges too. Litigation funding companies support many kinds of cases such as auto accidents, personal injury, malpractices, etc.

If you are unknown to dealing with court cases and loan taking procedures, you can take help of your lawyer to select a lawsuit financing company. A lawyer is the one who has the best understanding of the case. Based upon the case, he can guide you to choose the best financing company and all the things you need to clarify before taking your final decision. However it is unlawful for an attorney to borrow money from a lending company and give it to his client. The process can take place through him but not by him.

Thus as a client, you should have a proper understanding of taking financial help from any such company to maintain the transparency of the process.