Video: From legal costs to capital: The basics of legal finance

Philipp Leibfried: For most businesses, litigation is a cost center, but it doesn't have to be that way. With legal finance, legal teams can generate value from high value claims and be a strategic asset to the business.

At Burford Capital, that's what we help clients do. Commercial disputes are expensive and getting more so. Four in five in-house lawyers expect litigation spend to rise by at least 10% in the next five years. Previously, commercial disputes lowered profitability and drained cash available to invest in growth. Now, legal finance can change that.

First, businesses use Burford's legal finance capital to pay for their high value meritorious claims. Funding fees and expenses for these claims maximizes recoveries. While minimizing P&L impact and eliminating downside risk, clients can work with their counsel of choice without affecting control over settlement or litigation strategy. Secondly, businesses use legal finance to monetize and de-risk high value litigation and arbitration.

We can accelerate up to 50% of the expected entitlement of pending claims, judgments or awards. Clients can accelerate an expected entitlement from one case or many bundled in a single portfolio. That gives clients the immediate capital to fund the legal department or to invest anywhere in the business.

The business benefits are clear: Legal finance helps companies manage cash flow and create budget certainty. It eliminates the need to divert funds from revenue generating activities to pay for lawyers. It generates cash to invest in areas that drive growth. It transforms litigation and arbitration from costly liabilities into valuable financial assets. It optimizes financial outcomes by avoiding the profitability and market value hit that out-of-pocket legal spend can cause, especially for publicly traded companies. Burford's financing is non-recourse, not debt. If cases lose, nothing needs to be repaid.

Clients choose Burford because we are the leading legal finance firm in the UK and globally. We have top tier talent from the world's leading companies and law firms. We do all our diligence in-house, so we're fast and easy to work with. We're multiples larger than our nearest competitor, and we have ample capital to meet our client's needs. Clients use our proprietary data to budget and forecast with accuracy. But most of all, clients choose Burford because we offer so much more than legal finance capital, we act as their partner to make their businesses stronger and promote their growth.