Selecting a funder is itself a diligence exercise, not just a fundraising one. A central, often-overlooked question is whether the funder has sufficient capital, and sufficiently committed capital, not merely capital it has raised on paper, to meet all funding obligations that could arise over a matter's full multi-year life, including unbudgeted cost overruns partway through a case.
Track record matters beyond headline returns: how a funder has behaved when a case underperforms budget or timeline is often more informative than its marketing materials about a portfolio of wins. Claimants and firms increasingly ask funders directly for reference matters where a case ran into difficulty, not just success stories.
Because the market now includes several dozen active funders globally with meaningfully different risk appetites, claim-size minimums, and structural preferences, many claimants and law firms work with an independent litigation finance broker or advisor rather than approaching funders directly, a specialist intermediary can often negotiate materially better terms and knows which funders are actually likely to say yes to a given fact pattern, saving significant time in a process where diligence alone can take months.