Invest4Justice Peer-to-Peer Litigation Crowdfunding: Promoting Equal Access To Justice

Since the the Code of Hammurabi, there has been an unfair advantage between those who had the financial resources to pay for quality lawyers, and those who did not. This meant that the very wealthy were able to get away with murder (quite literally), while those with unequal financial resources had to both be the victims and to lose their case, since they did not have equal access to justice and the playing field was not level. Invest4Justice is a revolutionary new online financial platform that upends this historical inequity, by creating the first online market for justice.

Invest4Justice attacks this historical unfairness by combining two tools that have developed over the past decade, in order to allow litigants, from any country, to have their day in court and to finally obtain equal access to justice, while permitting any investor to earn the superb profits made available via third-party litigation funding, previously reserved only to large institutional investors and hedge funds.

By combining third-party litigation funding and peer-to-peer crowdfunding, through a network that connects lawyers, individual investors and litigants and provides users with tools to assess the merits of a case while preserving confidentiality, Invest4Justice permits anyone to have their day in court, regardless of their financial resources or the cost of litigation, with no loans, no out-of-pocket legal expenses and no debt. It is the first peer-to-peer litigation crowdfunding network, online in February 2014 but only open to the public in November 2014, allowing individual investors to invest in justice, funding access to justice to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who cannot currently pay to have their case heard in court with quality lawyers, or at all, and funding the legal disputes of the many businesses which would prefer to outsource legal costs.

Third-party funding is a relatively new but simple idea. Specialist funds provide funding for commercial litigation cases to cover the costs of a case in return for payment if the case is won. The return comes in the form of a multiple (2.5 times the amount invested is not unusual) of the funding commitment offered in the first place. It is easy to understand how this works: people who can’t afford to take cases to court are financed to do so and funders get a superb return on their money if the case is successful. Crowdfunding, which is well-known, is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, and is possible thanks to the internet.

By combining these two modern inventions, and applying them to the large but conservative legal market:

• Litigants profit by obtaining funds to pay for their case with no loans, no cash, and no debt through peer-to-peer litigation crowdfunding. They pay nothing to bring their legal claim, and they only pay a percentage of their legal compensation as a reward if their legal case succeeds and they actually obtain it. Invest4Justice takes no part of this compensation and up to 10,000 individual investors can fund each legal case. Litigants can also find lawyers and investors, and create legal teams and share confidential documents, by becoming members of the I4J network at no cost.

• Individual investors profit by earning the superb returns made possible by litigation funding. Returns can be up to 50 times their initial amount of investment. Investors can use the tools provided by I4J to investigate the merits of each case in detail, and to communicate with lawyers and litigants, by becoming members of the network for free.

• Lawyers profit by obtaining new clients, without having to worry about hourly billing or worrying whether they will be paid for their work in full. Lawyers can also obtain litigation funding for their clients or find new clients who do not need funding. In addition to assisting others to gain access to justice and to vindicate legal rights, lawyers are paid at market rates for their work.

• Society profits since anyone, anywhere in the world, can finally obtain access to justice with quality lawyers.

Invest4Justice is therefore win-win-win-win, as it is profitable for litigants, investors, lawyers and society as a whole.

Invest4Justice’s goal is not to profit from litigants, and it takes none of a litigant’s compensation. It is free to join the Invest4Justice peer-to-peer litigation crowdfunding network, and nothing is paid if a dispute is not successfully funded to Invest4Justice. Even when a dispute is successfully funded, Invest4Justice costs less to use than most crowdfunding networks, taking only 4% of the total amount of litigation funding raised, which it reinvests in meritorious cases, such as cases that support human rights and the protection of minorities.

If you support equal access to justice, become a member of the Invest4Justice peer-to-peer litigation crowdfunding network today. Litigants, lawyers and potential investors, from any country, can sign up for  free in less than a minute.

 

Invest4Justice Peer-to-Peer Litigation Crowdfunding: Promoting Equal Access To Justice

Invest4Justice Includes Charter Of User Rights

Invest4Justice has updated its Terms of Use to include a Charter of User rights. These new provisions indicate:

“Invest4Justice’s charter of User rights:

• Invest4Justice will not intentionally reveal any confidential information submitted by a lawyer, litigant or investor on the website, except if required to do so by a Governmental authority, law or applicable regulation;


• Invest4Justice will not inspect confidential case information or store such information following the termination of a user, unless made to do so by Governmental authorities or applicable regulations;


• Invest4Justice will not intentionally provide User’s information to third-parties or use User information for marketing or commercial purposes;


• Invest4Justice will not contact Users for matters concerning use of the Invest4Justice platform or network, and it will only send Users newsletters if they sign up for this; it will never “spam” users intentionally;


• Invest4Justice will not charge any fee for using the Invest4Justice network, except for a 4% fee on the funding that is successfully raised, and the payment of Paypal or banking transfer fees, evidence of which may be requested from Invest4Justice;


• Invest4Justice will ban any user who is found to be involved in fraudulent activity, or to have misrepresented their qualifications on the Invest4Justice network. If a user suspects that any activity is fraudulent, he or she will write Invest4Justice at contact@invest4justice.com informing them of this so that it may take action;


• Invest4Justice will return all funds to investors whose contact information is valid, except for Paypal or other banking transfer fees, for which proof may be requested, if a case is not fully funded.”

Invest4Justice Includes Charter Of User Rights

New York Times Article On Investing In Lawsuits

The New York Times recently published an article on investing in lawsuits entitled “Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?”, available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/should-you-be-allowed-to-invest-in-a-lawsuit.html

The article explains the significant increase in investing in lawsuits over the past two decades in common law countries, although the New York Times is apparently not aware that litigation funding also exists in France, Germany, Holland and many other civil law countries. (In fact, since anyone can invest in a lawsuit on Invest4Justice, it is open to investors in all nations already.)

It also provides interesting statistics. Between 2013 and 2014, Burford Capital, a public company traded in Britain, increased its lawsuit investments from $150 million to $500 million, with a 61 percent net profit margin. The two-year-old Gerchen Keller, one of the industry’s youngest funds, also raised $475 million in private capital. Like equities and mortgages, lawsuits are making a transition from a private arrangement to a fully monetized asset class and the ‘‘portfolio’’ held by IMF Bentham, an Australia-based funder, consists of 39 cases, which the firm values at over $2 billion.

Is investing in lawsuits new? Not at all, according to the New York Times, since Athenian political clubs used to back each other in lawsuits against their rivals. The Romans also allowed the practice, although it was banned by Emperor Anastasisus in the sixth century after the fall of Rome. The taboo on litigation finance apparently came from the Roman idea that a controversy only concerned the individuals involved in the original dispute. After the fall of the Roman Empire, however, litigants could still hire champions to represent them in “trial by battle.” During the Middle Ages, however, this idea of “champerty” (having a champion assisting in a lawsuit in return for proceeds) was scorned by the church as a form of usury. Philosophers such as Bentham mocked the ecclesiastic prohibitions of championing a lawsuit as a holdover from feudal days, however.

Is championing a lawsuit a good thing, as Bentham argued? Access to justice is itself supposedly a fundamental human right set out in Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.” The truth is that not everyone has the right to an effective remedy, since lawsuits are very expensive.

There are three main options today for allowing an effective remedy to all litigants: (1) to reduce the cost of good lawyers (very hard to achieve, but worth considering for instance by removing State monopolies on the provision of legal services), (2) to have the State intervene as a champion (which is what States do with legal aid, which is sadly inadequate in almost every country in the world and rarely produces good results) or (3) to allow private investors to invest in lawsuits. In reality, the options are not mutually exclusive, but there is every reason to encourage private investors to invest in a strong lawsuit if they are willing to do so.

Anyone can try their hand in investing in lawsuits on Invest4Justice. Not all cases win, but the returns can be tremendous when they do, and regardless of whether or not the case wins, they are helping to enable access to justice.

Invest in a lawsuit on Invest4Justice today!

New York Times Article On Investing In Lawsuits

CaroleP - My Lawsuit Was Funded In 4 Weeks

Invest4Justice allowed me to fund by lawsuit against my ex-husband in just four weeks. I did not have to pay anything, and I now have all the legal fees that I needed to pay my lawyer. Although I had to answer some questions to investors, and we exchanged a number of e-mails on Invest4Justice, the process was not difficult at all. William, Safiye and Manu were eager to answer my questions, so do feel free to reach out to them.

CaroleP - My Lawsuit Was Funded In 4 Weeks

New Lawyer Registered On Invest4Justice

-Bankruptcy Law

-Complex commercial litigation

-Real Estate Litigation

– Insurance and Transportation Law

New Lawyer Registered On Invest4Justice

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