Qualifying for Lawsuit Funding
Do You Quality For Lawsuit Funding?
Legal funding has often been confused with a loan, though this is not the case. Legal funding is a fairly new concept having been introduced around 1997 with few people having grasped the concept to this day. Many people who are not aware of litigation funding (as it is otherwise known) still turn to personal loans and credit cards in a bid to cover their legal costs or their personal expenses as they await their matter to be resolved in court. The major difference between lawsuit funding and a loan is that you do not have to repay your legal financing aid if you are not awarded the settlement. There are a number of requirements that come into play for one to qualify for legal funding and these include:
First and foremost you need to have hired the services of an attorney. The attorney needs to be hired on a contingency fee agreement basis meaning that he or she does not get paid unless the plaintiff wins the settlement.
Another requirement for legal funding is that the plaintiff must have suffered a personal injury from an accident where the defendant’s negligence comes into play or the plaintiff needs to have suffered a civil rights violation at work.
The case also needs to be fairly strong meaning that the plaintiff or litigant is not at fault. As regards the defendant, be it a company or an individual, they must have the ability to pay the settlement. Most cases deal with the defendant’s insurance company giving the plaintiff a higher chance of qualifying for legal funding.
The attorney representing the plaintiff needs to agree to the legal funding transaction and this can be done by the attorney signing a legal financing agreement. The legal financing agreement means that your attorney agrees to the funding arrangement and agrees to make payment to the legal funding company after the settlement is made. As a plaintiff, it is wise to be wary of those legal funding companies that do not require your attorney to sign any form of agreement. The best course of action in this case is to have your attorney look at the agreement anyway to ensure that there are no hidden clauses.
The amount to be approved by the legal funding company is solely dependent on the damages sought and the amount that can be financed by the company varies from company to company though most trends indicate that most companies offer between 10% and 15% of the compensation sought.
Find out how much you qualify for. Fill out the 30-Second Application.