Third-party litigation funding is a growing and, some say, controversial industry.  We’ve written before about whether such arrangements are permitted under state ethics rules (here), and we reported on the first effort to mandate disclosure of third-party funding via federal court rule (here), as well as the first state statute requiring

The New York City Bar Association recently found that common forms of third-party litigation funding for law firms violate New York’s Rule 5.4(a), which like the analogous Model Rule, bars fee-splitting with non-lawyers.

In its Opinion 2018-5, the NYCBA’s Professional Ethics Committee advised that “a lawyer may not enter into a financing agreement

On January 26, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California became the first to mandate disclosure of litigation funding that parties in class actions receive from outside sources, under a revision to the court’s standing order applicable to all cases. The rule provides that “in any proposed class, collective or representative action, the required disclosure includes any person or entity that is funding the prosecution of any claim or counterclaim.”
Continue Reading For the first time, court requires “litigation funders” to be disclosed — but only in class actions