Defending the fundamentals: Woodsford’s Steven Friel on funding, transparency and justice
As part of an article exploring the evolving legal and regulatory landscape of litigation funding, Dippy Singh of CDR Magazine recently interviewed our CEO, Steven Friel.
As global scrutiny of the third-party litigation funding industry intensifies, Steven shared Woodsford’s perspective on transparency, judicial understanding, and the role funders play in driving accountability and access to justice.
Steven defends the sector’s track record in promoting access to justice and insists that criticisms often come from “big corporate defendants who don’t like being held to account.” He notes that in jurisdictions where Woodsford is active “there is a large degree of consensus among the judiciary, the legal profession and public policy makers that litigation funding can be a force for good. While the decision of the UK Supreme Court in PACCAR was somewhat disruptive in the short term it led to an outpouring of support, including cross-party political consensus, for litigation funding.”
On the topic of education and public awareness, Steven noted that litigation funding is now widely understood among legal practitioners, but acknowledges that parts of the profession, including the judiciary, may still underestimate the risks involved, stating “if the judiciary properly understood the risks that we’re taking, the costs involved in running businesses like ours and the returns that we need in order to sustain our businesses, you would see more generous settlement awards.”
This raised the question of whether funders have a responsibility to be more vocal in educating the public and key stakeholders. For Steven, there is no widespread awareness issue where it matters most. He explains, “We don’t suffer from an education problem among our client base. The people who need to know about what we’re doing and need to understand our products do.”
Finally, when asked whether litigation funders may increasingly seek to operate ‘under the radar’ to avoid the scrutiny attached to high-profile, high-value cases, Steven remarks, “We are proud of our work in litigation funding, and more generally in collective redress, and are happy to support meritorious claims. We have no problem with scrutiny. We do not lurk in the shadows.”
You can read the full feature on “Time for funders to speak up?” here.
For further updates regarding Woodsford’s collective redress, escalated engagement and investor stewardship activities, follow us on LinkedIn.
