The Litigation Counsellor®

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3 Types of Financing Solutions Unique to a Plaintiffs’ Practice

Megan B. Payne, MBA | Chief Operating Officer

When it comes to financing your firm, you have a lot of options. You can self-finance, partner with co-counsel, utilize credit cards or take out a business loan—just to name a few.

Before you make a selection, you should have a clear understanding of the solutions available to you. Without a full appreciation of your choices, how will you know you’ve picked the right one? This means looking not only at traditional financing options, but also those specifically tailored to a plaintiffs’ practice. 

Bank vs. Specialty Finance

James Verrico, Esq. | Deputy General Counsel

You have a business plan in place and your law firm is poised for growth. The case files already on the shelf require not only an investment of time but of dollars. You need to find both time and money to bring more cases through the door. Yet, like many plaintiffs’ firms, your monthly cash flow is uncertain and subject to significant fluctuations.

While banks and other traditional lending institutions generally only allow you to pledge your personal assets to secure a loan, the Supreme Court of New Jersey recently held that you can also obtain financing using your anticipated attorney’s fees as collateral.

The decision, which follows similar holdings in other jurisdictions, affirms that you have an enhanced pool of resources you can leverage to get increased funding for your law practice—your future legal fees.

A recent report released by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) highlighted the increasing global  epidemic arising in advertising that could impact a plaintiff firm’s marketing strategy—due to ad fraud, a huge number of online ads never reach actual humans. The WFA estimates that by 2025, ad fraud will result in losses to companies aggregating over $50 billion annually, which could easily rise to $150 billion if nothing is done to protect consumers against the fraud. Further, the WFA predicts that fake internet traffic schemes will end up being the second-largest organized crime enterprise behind the drug trade.

In light of the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision in In re Hispanics United of Buffalo, Inc., No. 03-CA-027872, companies, both with and without unions, may want to take some time to reexamine their social media policies. Although the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) was enacted to prevent workers from being retaliated against for forming unions, the recent decision expands that protection to just about any worker who engages in “concerted activity” within the meaning of the act.