Litigation Funding for Victorian Disputes

When the claim is strong and the budget is not

Plenty of good commercial claims are abandoned every year, and it is rarely because the law was against them. The claimant looked at the size of the fight, looked at the bank balance, and let it go. Minority shareholders feel this hardest, because a corporate governance dispute usually means funding a fight against a company whose bank account you no longer control. If that is where you are, do not make the decision alone at a spreadsheet. There are several ways to run serious litigation without funding every dollar of it yourself, and one free call to 1800 130 120 will tell you which of them your case can realistically use.

How third-party funding works

A litigation funder is an investor in your claim. It pays your legal costs as the matter runs, usually indemnifies you against an adverse costs order if you lose, and in return takes an agreed share of the recovery if you win. Lose, and in the standard model you owe the funder nothing. Funding built its reputation in Australian class actions and insolvency recoveries, and it is now an established part of larger commercial disputes, with a competitive market of funders behind it.

The price is real, though. Across recent Australian class actions the median funder commission was about a quarter of the recovery, with individual rates running from about 14 to 40 per cent, so a funded win is a win you share. Where the alternative is never running the claim at all, that trade is usually worth making. Where you could fund the matter yourself, the arithmetic often points the other way. Expert evidence is usually where that arithmetic turns, and a professional negligence claim leans on experts harder than most commercial matters do. Either way, do the comparison on your own numbers before anyone signs anything.

Covering the other side’s costs if it goes wrong

For most claimants the frightening bill belongs to the other side. In Australian litigation the loser usually pays a large slice of the winner’s costs, and that adverse costs exposure sits over the whole case from the day you file. A funding agreement will often indemnify you against it, and where it does not, after-the-event insurance can. ATE is a policy taken out once the dispute already exists, and it pays the other side’s costs if your case fails. It arrived here through class actions and is now offered on ordinary commercial matters by a growing number of insurers.

A policy also gives you an answer when the defendant applies for security for costs and asks the court to make you put money up before the case goes any further. Insurers price the premium off the same things a funder weighs, so a fundable case is usually an insurable one. If a case is neither, that is useful information, and it is much cheaper to hear it now than after months of shopping. Plenty of matters use funding and a policy together, while plenty of others need neither, because running the claim directly with our commercial litigation lawyers does the job for less.

Where MK Law fits, stated plainly

We are not a fund and we do not sell insurance. What we bring is the part that determines whether any of this works: an honest merits assessment, a case summary built the way funders read them, introductions where the matter justifies them, and hard negotiation of the funding agreement so control of settlement and the size of the commission stay defensible. Where the truthful advice is that your claim will not attract funding, you will hear it in the first conversation, free. If the claim you are weighing up is a business dispute or a large unpaid debt, the same call covers the merits and the money together.

Find out what your claim can support

Call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. Bring the key documents and a note of what the claim is worth, and we will tell you whether it is a case for funding, a case to run directly, or neither, and what to do first. GET FREE ADVICE.