Litigation finance did not arrive fully formed. It was argued into existence, mostly in law reviews, over about fifteen years. The practices that now look ordinary, pricing a claim as an asset, staging capital against milestones, treating a funding agreement as something closer to a venture capital term sheet than a loan, all began as academic propositions that had to overcome centuries of hostility to trading in lawsuits.
This page is an annotated guide to that literature, written for people who will never read a law review. For each work we give the citation, what it actually argues, and why it matters if you are funding a case or seeking funding for one. Where a free version exists, we link to it.
We cite these works throughout the Research Library. Nothing here is a substitute for reading the originals, and nothing here is legal advice.
For the official documents rather than the scholarship, the government reports, congressional testimony, court rule proposals, and bar association opinions, see our companion Primary Sources page.
Before anyone could price a claim, the field had to answer an older objection. The common law doctrines of champerty and maintenance made trading in litigation suspect for centuries. The first generation of modern scholarship took that objection seriously and argued past it.
Sebok examines the intuition that a claim sold to a stranger becomes somehow counterfeit, and finds it cannot survive scrutiny. He traces the history of maintenance and champerty and argues the prohibitions rest on grounds that no longer hold, concluding that third parties should be permitted to invest in lawsuits far more freely than the law then allowed. Why it matters: when opposing counsel suggests that outside funding taints a claim, this is the scholarship that answers them, and courts have increasingly agreed. Free full text.
Molot reframes litigation as a risk that parties hold involuntarily and would often rather transfer, and argues for a market that lets them do so. The insight is that a lawsuit is not only a claim to money but an unwanted concentration of risk on a balance sheet. Why it matters: this is the intellectual origin of the corporate side of the industry, funding brought by companies who can afford their own legal fees but want the risk off their books. Molot went on to co-found Burford Capital, which is as direct a line from scholarship to industry as this field offers. University of Chicago Law Review.
Steinitz identifies the emerging secondary market in legal claims, analyzes the systemic effects of funding through a bargaining lens, and argues for moving away from prohibition toward nuanced regulation, closing with a five-part regulatory framework. Why it matters: it named the central question the industry still argues about, and the ownership problem it identifies resurfaces every time a defendant raises a standing or real-party-in-interest challenge. Free full text. See also our article Whose Claim Is This, Anyway?
The second generation of scholarship moved from whether to how. This is the most practically useful body of work in the field, and the least read by the people it would help most.
The foundational reframe. Where earlier work analogized litigation funding to contingency fees, Steinitz argues the better analogy is venture capital, because both are characterized by extreme uncertainty, severe information asymmetry between the party with the information and the party with the money, and high agency costs. She then works through which VC contracting solutions transfer directly to funding, which need adaptation, and how. Why it matters: if you understand only one idea from this literature, make it this one. It explains why funding agreements look the way they do, why funders want milestones and information rights, and why the deal is a partnership in economics even when it is a purchase in form.
Confronts the problem at the center of every funding negotiation: nobody can reliably price a legal claim at the outset. Her answer is staged funding, releasing capital in tranches tied to milestones, which lets both sides revise as information arrives and treats the option to settle as a compound call option. Why it matters: this is why a funder offers you money in stages rather than one check, and why the price of your second tranche may differ from your first. Understanding the logic makes you a far better negotiator.
An annotated model funding agreement, drafted provision by provision, with the reasoning for each choice. It was developed through an unusual open research project at litigationfinancecontract.com, where each provision was published for public commentary and revised in response. Why it matters: the single most useful document in this bibliography for a claimant about to sign a funding agreement. Funding contracts are not standardized, and most claimants see their first one with no benchmark for what is normal. This is the benchmark. Iowa Law Review.
Not a litigation finance paper at all, this is the empirical study of real venture capital contracts that gives the VC analogy its factual footing. Kaplan, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Strömberg examined actual VC financings and found they separately allocate cash flow rights, board rights, voting rights, and liquidation rights, with roughly 15 percent of deals providing only partial funding at signing, the rest contingent on the company later hitting milestones. Steinitz cites this study directly in A Model Litigation Finance Contract to support the point that VC-style securities carry a bundle of rights well beyond cash flow, the same bundle litigation funders have adapted to claims. Why it matters: when a defendant or a skeptical claimant dismisses the VC comparison as loose metaphor, this is the paper that shows the comparison rests on how real venture deals are actually built, not on analogy alone. SSRN.
Once money is attached to a claim, the claimant is no longer the only party with an interest in how it is litigated and when it settles. This is the field's hardest unresolved problem, and the one with the sharpest ethical edge.
Argues that the problems litigation finance creates are all versions of one classic problem: the separation of ownership from control. She proposes treating a claim as an asset with an existence separate from the plaintiff, potentially through securities tied to litigation proceeds, which would allow corporate governance tools to be applied to litigation governance. Why it matters: it gives you the right vocabulary for the anxiety claimants feel when they take funding, and it explains why well-drafted agreements spend so much language on who decides what.
Introduces "zombie litigation" to describe a governance failure in which control over claims drifts away from claimants toward funders and attorneys acting as asset brokers and managers, with the nominal plaintiff along for the ride. Situates the problem within the growth of aggregate and portfolio funding. Why it matters: the most current statement of the industry's central ethical risk, and directly relevant to how claimants should evaluate a funder's proposed control rights. The Institute's own structure, flat fees rather than a percentage and no control over any claim, is a response to exactly this critique. See a real-world version of this exact fight in our Dispute Library entry Glaz LLC (Burford affiliates) v. Sysco Corp., where Steinitz herself served as an expert witness.
Argues that the search for a bright-line disclosure rule is misguided, because funding scenarios vary too widely to be governed by one, and proposes a balancing test applied case by case instead. Why it matters: whether your funding agreement is discoverable is a live question in most jurisdictions, and this is the framework courts and legislatures are actually arguing over. Republished in Harvard Law School's The Practice.
Public congressional testimony on oversight of third-party litigation funding, followed by written answers to post-hearing questions. Why it matters: a compact, current, and freely available statement of where federal regulatory attention is pointed, useful to anyone assessing regulatory risk in a funded matter. Full testimony.
Argues that financial products now common in the legal market are functionally equivalent to owning a law firm and raise the same governance problems, analyzes Arizona's legalization of non-lawyer participation, and proposes conditioning such ownership on organizing as a "legal benefit entity" obliged to prioritize clients and courts over investors. Why it matters: essential reading for any firm considering portfolio or firm-level financing, and the best available map of where law firm ownership is heading.
Most claims made about litigation finance, by both its advocates and its critics, are theoretical. Two studies stand out for testing them against data.
The first large-scale empirical study of consumer litigation funding in the United States, drawing on proprietary data covering more than 100,000 funding requests over twelve years. Among the findings: the funder rejects roughly half of applications and is deliberately cautious about advancing too much against any single case, which preserves incentives for both client and lawyer. Why it matters: it is direct evidence against the common assertion that funders indiscriminately inflate litigation, and it quantifies how selective this market actually is. Free full text.
An early empirical test using Australian data, where funding matured earlier than in the United States. The authors find some evidence that funding is associated with increased litigation and court caseloads, and that funded cases tend to be more prominent than comparable unfunded ones. Why it matters: honest scholarship includes findings that complicate the industry's preferred story, and this one does. Free full text.
Maya Steinitz, Litigation Finance, Law Firm Ownership & The Future of the Legal Profession (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). A book-length study of the law, economics, and policy of litigation and law firm finance, covering the definition of funding, the pricing of claims, deal structure, regulation, and the consequences of the erosion of lawyers' monopoly over legal practice. Likely to become the standard reference.
Maya Steinitz, The Case for an International Court of Civil Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Not about funding directly, but essential background for cross-border mass tort matters, arguing that victims of transnational corporate harm have no adequate forum and proposing one.
British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Mapping Third Party Litigation Funding in the European Union (2025), commissioned by the European Commission, with Steinitz as national expert for the United States. The most current comparative survey of how funding is regulated across jurisdictions. Covered in more detail, with a free link, on our Primary Sources page.
If you are a claimant deciding whether to accept funding, read the model contract work first. If you are a lawyer advising a client, start with the venture capital analogy and the pricing paper, since together they explain nearly every term you will negotiate. If you are assessing regulatory risk, start with the disclosure paper and the congressional testimony. If you are a funder or investor, the empirical studies are the honest ones.
We maintain this page because a field this young deserves to be understood through its primary sources rather than its marketing. If we have mischaracterized a work, or omitted one that belongs here, we would genuinely like to know.