Maurice MacSweeney from Harbour Litigation Funding explains litigation funding, damages based agreements and the help that is available for litigants.  He talks about the availability of funding for solicitors' firms, who may be handling a number of cases, as well as for the litigants involved in the proceedings, the types of cases that are suitable for such funding and those that are not.

Barry Baines:

Welcome. This is Barry Baines from Baines Law, a legal miscellany where we podcast about cases and legal issues, as well as talking to professionals and others who have experience of our legal system.

So, a very warm welcome today to Maurice MacSweeney, and thank you Maurice so much for agreeing to talk to us. You have a very interesting background. You were a choral scholar at Kings College, Cambridge, where you achieved a BA in English and Law, and you are fully proficient in French as well as speaking Italian. When we first met around 12 years ago, you were director of business development at 2 Hare Court, the prestigious Barristers Chambers, and from there you moved to another significant set at Doughty Street. What led you to your current role as director of litigation funding at Harbour Litigation Funding Ltd?

Maurice MacSweeney:

12 years, Barry, a long time. So, look, I mean, I think it's been a really interesting decade, I suppose, also for litigation funding. I had come across Harbour and Susan Dunn who set up the business, was one of the co-founders, and she at the time was funding tax tribunal cases that 2 Hare Court were doing. And it was very early days for litigation funding at that point, but I kept, I just thought it was an interest concept and I had kept an eye on it ever since then. I'd been with Barristers for about 10 years, and then there was just... I got a call about something which was rather similar. And a lot of what I was doing at Doughty Street and 2 Hare Court before that was talking to solicitors, investigating what they had by way of cases, what their needs might be in terms of barristers.

And so I suppose with funding, it was a similar conversation where you'd go to solicitors, talking about their caseload and seeing what their needs were in terms of funding, and what their clients' needs were. I guess it was the same conversation, but instead of talking about barristers, we were talking about money, and talking about financing. And arguably, that was a more welcome conversation for some solicitors to have. So yeah, I mean, it's broadly similar what I do now, but the subject matter is slightly different.

Barry Baines:

So for those who are not thoroughly familiar with the terms, I wonder if you could start by explaining what litigation funding is.

Maurice MacSweeney:

I mean, it is fairly simple, actually. I mean, in essence, a litigation funder is, it's an asset management company. So we invest in the outcome of a piece of litigation or arbitration. And I think in reality, the day-to-day of it is pretty simple. We'll pay all the costs of a dispute, so that will be lawyers fees, disbursements for barristers, expert witnesses, ATE insurance, importantly, so that protects against adverse costs if things don't go well in the case. So we'll pay all of those costs until a case concludes, either with a settlement or by going to trial.

And then if that case wins at trial or it settles, and importantly, only if you actually manage to get some money back from the other side, then we as the investor in the case, as the funder, will receive a pre-agreed share of the outcome. And so that for us is the return on our investment. I suppose, where litigation funding is different from something like a bank loan, is that if the case is unsuccessful, then it's the funder that bears that loss. So it's non-recourse funding, and that means that the claimant in the case doesn't have to pay whether or not the case wins or loses. And we as the investor, we as the funder, are taking that risk, and so if the case loses, it's our problem, it's our loss.

I suppose because there's a return for an investor, funding is best suited really to these sorts of commercial claims for damages, where you're pursuing some pot of money. You can provide something for defendants, but that is more difficult, pursuing a pot of money for a defendant, your saving costs about not having to pay over money. You might pay five million rather than 50 million in damages, and so that's what you're doing there. The reason it doesn't work for defendants is that it can be quite difficult to define what success is for a defendant. But it's most commonly used, I suppose, for those claimants who are bringing some sort of claim for damages when there's a pot of money that the claimant will get, and then that pot of money can be shared with the litigation funder.

Barry Baines:

Yes, I understand. So how did the professional funding industry come about? Solicitors have been able to risk fees on a client case in exchange for a bonus on success for some time now, so how is it that funders came on the scene?

Maurice MacSweeney:

And so conditional fee agreements, you had solicitors beginning to share in the risk of a case. There was that. That is a form of litigation funding, the solicitor is risking their fees. But even though solicitors could risk their fees, you might still have a situation where a claimant isn't able to fund disbursements or adverse costs insurance. You begin to get the emergence of companies like Harbour that can do that sort of thing. It's really, I suppose, Sir Rupert Jackson was, at the time, a High Court Judge who was asked to look at the cost of litigating in the civil courts, and there were extraordinary costs. The UK has always been quite expensive litigating, but it was really expensive. And so he was then setting up a review, and one of the things he recommended, amongst many other very good reforms, one of the things he recommended was saying that litigation funding should be a thing. And so I think it's really with those reforms in 2009, it begins to really take off.

Barry Baines:

Yes, indeed. And you mentioned that's how Harbour became about, but what is Harbour's history? How have things changed over the years?

Maurice MacSweeney:

So funding single cases, it went from insolvency to other forms of claims for damages, and now it's very broad. So single cases still are quite important and the advantage of doing that is that you can spread the risk. So with a single case, it either wins or loses, it's very binary. But with a portfolio, the wins on the three successful cases might make up for losses on the two, if that makes sense. The other sorts of things we're doing now with funding, you can purchase a judgment or reward, so if somebody has won a case but a lot of companies and indeed individuals might get litigation fatigue, grueling process litigation cases all the way to the end. And so you might get that reward and it might be challenging to enforce it, or it might be taking some time, so we can purchase a case. That's another way in which we deploy our funding.

I think and there's all sorts of steps you can take early on in order to minimise the risk of enforcement. But you may have a company that says, "Look, we don't want wait for the outcome of the case which could be many years away. We need to provide some value to shareholders now." And so you can also monetize a portion of the case, where they say, "Okay the case is still ongoing, but we want to sell a 20% stake in the outcome." And so we can come up with a price and then they're able to realize some value from that litigation sooner rather than later. So I think it's really varied now. There's lots of different ways in which people are using litigation funding. It's not just those single cases anymore.

The other thing I suppose that I haven't mentioned is funding for law firms, and I think that's newer. So I was talking about law firms working on a conditional fee agreement, but I think we are seeing more firms now that are taking advantage of damages-based agreements, and there are these DBA regulations which govern that. For a long time, I think people have been nervous about and law firms weren't sure about how enforceable or not they could be, but there's some good case law now supporting that. I think firms are willing to take more risks themselves. I think, to be honest, I think a lot of their clients are asking them to do that, be a bit more flexible about billing, providing some sort of alternative fee structure.

A damages-based agreement is really where a law firm is working on a success fee. It's very popular in the United States, there's a lot of firms working on that base. And it's no win, no fee, really, on a big commercial scale. And they'll say, "In exchange for running your case at no cost to you, we'll take 25% or 30% of the outcome of the case." But for the law firm, that's an awful lot of debt, an awful lot of credit risk to have on your books, and so funders are able to help with that now. So I suppose that's one of the more recent interesting shifts, is that it's not just funding for claimants, it's funding for the law firms themselves, whereby we might pay a portion of their work in progress and we'll pay for all the disbursements in a case, and then the law firm, when the case is... if the case is successful, they will share their success fee with the funders. So it's much more varied than it used to be. I think there's lot more options available than there once were.

Barry Baines:

Thanks that’s interesting. Maurice, how do you source capital to invest in cases? Whose money are you spending?

Maurice MacSweeney:

There's lots of people who'd say they'd rather we were spending less money, but it's good to put this capital to work. So I guess all funders are different. I mean, for Harbour, we raise our own capital from investors, from professional investors, that would be things like endowment funds, pension funds, that sort of investor community. And then the way it works for us, we raise closed-end funds, so we'll raise the pot of money for a particular group of cases, we'll deploy that money over a period for about three years or something like that, four years, and then there's another three or four years for those cases to conclude and then we provide the returns to investors along the way and at the end. So we're on our fifth fund like that, so we raised the money and there are a number of investors who've been with us since day one, and so that's our kind of particular community. So we're raising our own money.

Other funders do different things, so others might take on debt. There's lots of funders that are supported by people like hedge funds, and they'll sit behind them and they'll provide some sort of loan to an engagement funder and the funder will then invest that money and try to provide a return. I suppose the risk of that for some litigation funders is that if the cases don't go well, then the debt can be called in. So I suppose if there are listeners who do work with funders, it's a good question to ask, where does your money come from? And I think importantly, the other question I suppose now that I think of it, is whether or not they leverage their fund, by which I mean they're promising the same amount of money to a number of different cases.

And in normal circumstances that may be fine because the win on one case will provide enough money to pay the bills on a second case. But again, if it doesn't go so well and you have a few losses, that could be quite difficult to manage. So that's always a question to ask. We choose not to do that at Harbour, I think it provides a lower return for investors. But at the same time, I think we just rather make sure that if a funded party, if a law firm or a client needs that money, then it's always there ready to go whenever they need it. As we all know, litigation is an uncertain thing, unexpected things arise, so you need that money, I think, available.

Barry Baines:

Yes, certainly nothing could be more uncertain than litigation. And keeping on the subject of Harbour, are you able to tell us the approximate number of cases Harbour has funded? Who's using the funding, is it just private clients who have difficulty in funding their fees or is it corporates?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Good question, how many have we funded? I think we've probably funded now something in the region of about 130, 140 cases, and the average budget, I think in our most recent fund, was about nine or 10 million, something like that. So they tend to be quite substantial cases, but I mean, there is quite a big attrition rate. So I think we've considered about 4,000 cases, four and a half thousand cases, something like that, so only about 3 or 4% of cases that we look at are actually funded. And I think that's for a variety of reasons, some just won't work, they haven't got great merits, other cases may be, they might have good merits, but they're not investible for reason or another. You may be difficult to get the money back or it's a £5 million claim but it's going to cost about four million to pursue it, so it's uneconomic. There are reasons why cases may not be suitable.

I think it definitely is a smaller number of cases, and I should say as well, litigation funding with a third-party funder like Harbour, it's one option but it's not the only option for how to fund a case. There are lots of firms that will work on risk. And you can have insurance-backed products that help mitigate the risk, albeit with insurance, you still have to pay that premium upfront. So it's one option, but not the only one. I mean, in terms of who's using funding, I think, yes, I mean, historically it probably was just those who didn't have money to pursue a case, but that's very much changed. Certainly, there are some cases that can't get off the ground without some sort of funding like this. And I guess the most recent example I can think of is the Hiscox Action Group. So you might remember, Barry, that there was during the pandemic, there were small, medium-sized businesses that had bought this business interruption insurance.

Barry Baines:

Yes I do.

Maurice MacSweeney:

And they were making a claim against Hiscox and other insurers like that to get payouts to help their businesses survive. And the insurers were very reluctant to pay and they were saying, "Well, we won't pay because that's not covered by the policy. We couldn't envisage these sorts of things." And it went to the Supreme Court in record, something like six months, which is fast. I mean, all of that case was a real testament to the English judiciary and the English legal system can really get on with things. So that moved very quickly, but there, you had small and medium-sized businesses that were on their knees and really needed some sort of assistance to get that case up and running. It couldn't be something they would fund themselves.

You have those sorts of people where they haven't got the money to do it, but you do have big companies that are using it. And I think that's quite interesting, the reasons why they're doing that. So we have a case, one of the world's largest asset managers that we're funding now, they have particular bylaws about their fund. I mean, they can't use investor funds for litigation, so they can't use it, they have the money, but they can't use it for that purpose. But companies, if you think about companies, litigation is, it's a really uncertain business. It's uncertain in length, it's uncertain in cost, and that can be a challenging thing for a CFO to have or a finance director to have hanging around their balance sheet. You've got to be making provision for that.

And so a lot of companies say, "Look, we'd much rather spend our money on making widgets," or whatever it is they do, whatever their core business is. Funding for them can be quite a useful tool to de-risk, as we call it. And they can say, "Right, well, look, a funder will pay the cost of risk so we can move all of that off our books. We don't have that hanging around our balance sheet. And then anything that comes in afterwards can be an exceptional license. So if we make any recoveries, then that ends up being a positive addition to the balance sheet." There are those sorts of reasons that companies use, even big companies that can self-fund choose not to because there might be good accounting reasons for doing it. It's quite a variety, I think.

Barry Baines:

Yes. I mean, I think you've explained the sort of cases you think are suitable for funding. What would be the minimum worth of such a case, and what does Harbour get out of it? What's the price of litigation funding work, in other words?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Well, that's a good point, I think, and it's kind of allied to the minimum value bit of your question as well. So I would say, I mean, it's not a hard and fast rule. We sort of say it's difficult to fund an individual case that's worth less than £10 million. And that's not us being snobby about the size of the case, it's just a kind of economic reality of it. So what you tend to find over the lifetime of a bit of litigation is that the costs go up and the claim value comes down. And so you have this bit in the middle that gets squeezed. So there's a kind of base level of litigation costs, the budget that's required to pursue a bit of litigation, and then what you want to do is obviously the lawyers and all the bills need to be paid, you then need to have enough in there for a return to be provided to Harbour, to the investor.

And then what we all really want is for the majority of those damages to go to the claimant. I think we always feel very uncomfortable if there's any prospect that that Harbour will be taking more than half the damages of the case. What's the point in pursuing it? It shouldn't just be an exercise for making money for the funder or the lawyers, it's really, it's still the client's case. They've got to be taking most of the damages. So we sort of say that 10 million thing, pounds, level for a single case.

I should say it definitely isn't a hard and fast rule all. And I mentioned things like portfolios, where you have a group of claims. If you're able to spread the risk more widely, then the value of the claim can come down quite significantly. And firms, so there's one that we have which is about to be finalized, but that's to help a firm bring employment claims, and those are contractual disputes which can be fairly low in value. The other example where you see funding used for low value claims is something like PPI type cases, those sorts of high volume but low value claims. There is some funding that can be provided for those sorts of cases. It does vary, but I think for single big commercial cases, probably about 10 million. But it's one of those rules that's often more honored in the breach than the observance.

Barry Baines:

You said it's not suitable for defendants, but apart from that, is there anything else you can't invest in?

Maurice MacSweeney:

I mean, it's a pretty broad church, and I think the terms, the kind of rules that we have with our investors, is that it just needs to be something which relates in one way or another to a dispute. So it's quite deliberately drafted in those broad terms. I mean, you do find in some jurisdictions that funding is still illegal, closer to home than you might think.In the Republic of Ireland litigation funding is not permitted, even though there are lots of big commercial claims that happen there. And I think there's lots of conversations going on in Ireland for that, whether or not that may change.

I mean, for Harbour, there are other things I suppose, it's not so much we can't invest in, but we don't invest in, personal injury, clinical negligence, those sorts of cases we don't invest in. And again, that's not because they're not good cases, but the damages in those cases, they're often required for a lifetime of care or something like that. So yeah, we don't want to be in a position where we're -

Barry Baines:

Indeed, yes. Absolutely.

Maurice MacSweeney:

- taking the money that somebody needs for living comfortably after these sorts of life-changing events. The other thing that we don't do is matrimonial finance, so big divorce cases. They're interesting cases where you might have a good offer, commercial offer assessment on the table, but emotions run high in those sorts of cases, and so somebody may insist on going to trial to have their day in court rather than taking an offer. So those sorts of cases can be a bit challenging so we don't do those.

The other thing, I suppose, that we wouldn't invest in, there are some jurisdictions where you may need help of the local courts to enforce a judgment. So you might get a judgment in the English courts, but you need to go to a particular jurisdiction to enforce it. And there are examples of funder-backed cases where, for example, they've had to go to the Middle East to enforce an order and the local courts in the Middle East will say, "Oh, well, we don't recognise that judgment." So there are those jurisdictions where it may be difficult to enforce, and we would maybe think twice about funding those sorts of cases.

Barry Baines:

So would it be correct for me to use the expression that this is really about solid commercial funding?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Yes, I think that's fair. I think that's a fair assessment. That's really where this is used most often. I mean, I think, we really like looking at all sorts of cases and we'll always try and make something work if we can, but in terms of what's most likely to be approved by our investment committee, it probably is the big commercial claims for damages. And I think because there are lots of really great cases out there, there's lots of good causes, but our business, like I said at the start, our is investing on behalf of professional investors. We need to make a return, and so it's good, solid commercial claims rather than the more pioneering bits of litigation.

Barry Baines:

Tell us, Maurice, about the onboarding process after you're approached for funding. Can Harbour make quick decisions, for example?

Maurice MacSweeney:

In terms of sort of how we onboard a case, I mean, the first thing we'll do, there's four main criteria that we use, and I think they probably are in this order of importance. The first thing is recoverability, I mean, we sort of talked about that a bit already, but we're obsessed really with recovering at the very least, the investment that we've made in the case. We're looking at the defendant, it's not just that the defendant is good for the damages, if you're suing them for a hundred million but they only have 10, well, there's not much point in pursuing them for that big amount because you're never going to get hold of it. So it's not just that they're good for those damages, but actually you can also make them pay. So they're not, for example, in one of these foreign jurisdictions that I mentioned, or their assets aren't tied up in a trust in Cyprus or something like that. So that recoverability thing is a big important question for us.

Economics, I've touched on, I think we want to make sure that it's economic to bring the case, that the ratio between the litigation budget and the claim value has enough space for the claim value to come down and the cost to go up, as they almost inevitably will. One of the other things that we'll look at, the team is really important to us. So we want to know that the legal team is good for bringing these sorts of cases, they've got a good track record of success. Sometimes it's a new legal point, but generally we'll want them at least to have brought similar cases to successful conclusion. And then last but not least, I mean, it's probably last on our list, it might be first on the list of the lawyers, but the merits. The case obviously needs to have good merits. And that's the first thing a lawyer will do, but again, we're looking at this from the perspective of being an investor, and so there are other factors at play. So yes, the case needs good merits, but a good case is not necessarily an investible case.

So those are the criteria that will apply. And then thereafter, what we always suggest as well is if people just pick up the phone and have a chat, we can pretty quickly tell whether or not something may be suitable for funding. One of those criteria may not be applicable and you can knock out a case fairly quickly, and then everyone has an early decision and they can decide what to do next. But if a case is suitable for funding, we'll probably want more detail. I think we'll probably ask the legal team, it doesn't need to be counsel, but sometimes it is. So either from counsel or from solicitors, and advise on the merits just to make sure you are actually going to be able to establish liability. You're supported in law to establish liability. And then we'll do some economic analysis and then we put the case to our investment committee.

So that's really part of my job, as well as sourcing new cases, I then work them up and an advocate for that case in front of our investment committee, which is always a tough process. They're very rigorous in how they analyze the case. And our investment committee meets every two weeks, so on the investment committee, we've got three independent senior commercial QCs. There are some people from Harbour and then there's independent finance people as well. They'll look at a case and analyse it, and if they think it's a good case, they'll recommend it to our board for investment.

So yes, there's another process that we go through which takes a little time, I guess, I mean, in terms of quick decisions, yes, I think we have done one from initial phone call to a funding agreement in about two weeks. Now, I mean, that's pretty unusual. That's a lot of people working very hard and not much sleep. But it can be done, I think that's the point. And actually the Hiscox insurance case I mentioned is a good example of that, where you just need it to move quickly. So that can be done, everything can be mobilised, but I guess a two month period for all the kind of toing and froing would not be unusual. And when you think about that, from that initial phone call, you're getting the information, you're going through the process. And then you've got an investment agreement.

Barry Baines:

That sounds very quick.

Maurice MacSweeney:

There's a contract between the funder and the funded party. So yes, two weeks unusual, two months, probably maybe more usual. And I think it takes a little time, but you're also talking potentially about a contract that relates to us giving somebody millions of pounds or dollars. So yes, it's a rigorous process, but if it needs to move quickly, it can.

Barry Baines:

There's a degree of reassurance in that, of course. Litigation funding is though not without its critics, is it? Some people say it encourages cases to be brought which have poor merits, or that you don't encourage settlement because you will get more money after a trial, or they say that funders take control of litigation if they fund it. Is any of that fair comment?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Well, I understand why people have those thoughts and I think if you sit back and look at them, I suppose what you were saying about poor merits. I mean, that's a really terrible business model for an investor, for a funder, if you're bringing... It's not really ambulance chasing because we're not going to support cases that have a high risk of losing. So I don't think that argument holds up, the one that litigation funding opens the floodgates to more bad litigation. I think it's still got to be a really good case. I mean, in terms of some of the other things with settlement, I mean, yes, it probably is true, I think that... I'll say in terms of our pricing, the return that an investor get probably will increase over time. So if a case settles within six months, the cost of the funding will be much lower at that stage than it us after a trial. And the reason for that is your capital is tied up for longer.

So there is a value to money over time, and also there's much greater risk. You might, at the very outset of a case, have an advice from counsel that says, "I give this case a 65% chance of success." Well, by the time you've got to trial and you're in front of a judge, then in my view at least, it is, they judge could go either way and it is a very binary outcome, you win or you lose. So the pricing increases over time. Having said, for that reason as well, we do encourage settlement. What we really want is a case with great merits that's likely to settle early. That is perfect for us. Whilst we will get less money if a case settles early than it would've if it had concluded after trial, we'd rather have that money now than risk a bigger sum, that taking a lot longer to conclude. So I think we probably do encourage settlements more than people think.

And in terms of control, this is the something that corporates ask about a lot actually, they don't want to cede control of their case, they want to continue to use the same legal team. I mean, for these sorts of champerty and maintenance reasons, actually we can't take control. And our view is it's very much the client's case, so all the key decisions in a case, whether it's about settlement or key decisions to make in the conduct of the litigation, all of that is still very much in the hands of the law firm advising their client. So it's those people that really make the decision on the cases.

Now, clearly, we're interested in the progress of litigation, and if there are discussions about settlement, we'd really like to know about it. But there is a sort of monthly conversation that goes on between us and the law firm, but really, we're not that involved on a day-to-day basis. We like to be kept updated, but we're not kind of exercising day-to-day control. And I mean, I think, anyone who has questions, we'd always say, "Look, come and ask about it," because we always love to... if people have concerns about, we'd love to try and address those and reassure them. But I think a lot of the comments you hear, I think don't really hold up.

Barry Baines:

In reality, of course, a lot of cases do settle before they get to court, don't they?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Oh it's a huge number. And I think, I mean, we're looking at an interesting data, litigation data analytics program, and it's very high proportion. So it certainly of commercial claims, I can't now remember the exact percentage, but it is the majority of them that will settle. So the number that actually go all the way to trial is fairly low.

Barry Baines:

So finally, Maurice, what do you think's next? How do you see the funding world shaping up over the next year or two?

Maurice MacSweeney:

And I think there's a couple of reason for that. Clients, in the midst of the pandemic, were definitely asking law firms, what can you do about billing? Can we have longer payment terms? Can you do something other than the hourly rate? And the pandemic, the economic effect of the pandemic may be receding a bit, but I think that habit, clients still want law firms to offer something creative by way of how they charge. So I think the fact that you have that client demand, you have the judges saying, "We think DBAs are enforceable," law firms don't need to be so worried about whether or not DBAs can be enforced. So I mean, I think we'll see more use of those.

And I think that's great for litigants. The firm has a vested interest in the outcome of the case too. So if an law firm needs to put more fees in in order to win a case, actually that doesn't impact the client who has certainty as to what their share of the outcome will be. And they're still retaining most of the damages. I mean, I think if you're a client and you can take 70% of the outcome of a case and not have any upfront cost, I mean, I think that's quite attractive for any client. So I think law firms are becoming more confident about using those sorts of things.

And I guess the other sort of trend, I suppose, so far as one can forecast trends, but I think linked to that is the increase or a more close relationship between law firms and litigation funders. So historically, we would always fund the claimant in a case, that would be the funded party, but law firms themselves are taking that funding. I mean, I was talking about it earlier on, but I think we'll see more of that where we'll pay some of their work in progress, we'll pay their disbursements. And it means, and even if the case wins or loses, they can still pay their staff and pay the building. So, yes, so I mean, helping law firms kind of defray risk in order for them to offer more creative options to their clients is something we'll probably see more of over the next year or two.

And then there are quite interesting things happening about stock market listings with law firms. There's about half a dozen listed at the moment, but I think, I mean, maybe that's a subject for another day, but I think we're seeing... I mean, we did a survey recently just to learn a little bit about what law firms plans were post-pandemic, and there was a high number that was saying they were actually considering, 30% were actively considering listing on the stock market in the next 12 to 18 months and there was a bigger percentage of people that were giving it some thought.

But that was surprisingly high to us, and I think we'll see more listing activity. I think a lot of those listed, there's only half a dozen, but those listed law firms did quite well in the pandemic. They held up quite well. And so I think investors are a bit more confident about law firms, investing in law firms, as I say. I think they've been tried and tested. So that investor confidence, firms wanting to be quite ambitious about taking advantage of the opportunities post-pandemic, I think will see interesting things happening on the stock market.

Barry Baines:

Well, thanks very much indeed, Maurice, for that very interesting overview of litigation funding. Is there any contact detail you'd like to leave your firm before we sign off?

Maurice MacSweeney:

Barry Baines: Thank you for listening to Baines Law. Listen out for future podcasts where we will continue to discuss issues of interest to the legal community. If there is a professional perspective that you would like to share, get in touch via our website at www.barrybaines.com. You can also follow us on Twitter, @baineslaw. We look forward to presenting to you again very soon on Baines Law.