Happy Friday! This week I spoke with Cesar Bello, Corbin Capital Partners’ director of litigation finance, about the company’s first dedicated litigation fund.
Corbin Capital Partners announced on Wednesday that it closed its first dedicated litigation finance fund for $342 million.
The alternative asset manager has been investing in litigation finance since 2018 and likes the sector because it’s not tied to the stock market. It’s also a way to pursue a credit-style strategy while avoiding the type of concerns investors had with private credit’s exposure to software companies.
Litigation funding “is very different than the things that are giving folks problems now on the private credit side,” Bello said. “The risk is legal risk, and hopefully you’re playing it the way we are—diversified across a bunch of different type of legal risks.”
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Burford Quarterly Report
Litigation funder Buford Capital released its quarterly report today and recorded a $2.4 billion drop in capital provision assets in the three months ending March 31. Capital provision assets fell to $3.1 billion, down from $5.3 billion in the same period of 2025.
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a ruling that ordered Argentina to pay $16.1 billion to investors in March and Burford’s financials were expected to take a hit.
CEO Christopher Bogart said on an earnings call that Burford will be filing an en banc petition later today, which asks the entire court to take a look at the case again. He also said the case is very well set up for arbitration.
“This is not something that is pie in the sky,” he said. “This is a very real alternative.”
What I’m Reading
- Michael Toth, director of research at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute, advocated in The Wall Street Journal that Congress should should revisit Sen. Thom Tillis’ bill that excludes litigation finance from capital-gains treatment. He argues that foreign investors are receiving special treatment for financing lawsuits.
- Conversely, Cathie Adams, first vice president of the Eagle Forum, wrote in The Washington Times that Tillis is turning against grassroots conservative activists by trying to jam his litigation finance tax bill into the budget reconciliation package. She wrote that the bill would effectively dry up a funding source that conservative nonprofits rely on.
Business & Practice
Big Law’s Alleged M&A Insider Traders Switched Firms With Ease
US charges that three M&A lawyers exploited client secrets for financial gain raise questions as to how they got hired at seven different Big Law firms over the course of their alleged crime spree.
DOJ Lead Attorney in Trump’s Big Law Fights to Resign
The Justice Department’s lead attorney in President Trump’s court fight with Big Law is resigning for a job in the private sector.
Lawyer Fired by Trumps for Harvard Work Is Again Helping Family
The conservative lawyer fired by the Trump Organization last year for representing Harvard University is back helping the family, this time defending a crypto venture.
DOJ Offers Lawyers $25,000 Signing Bonuses as Hiring Lags
The Justice Department is taking a new tack to overcome hurdles in attracting qualified legal talent and to prevent current lawyers from leaving: offering signing and retention bonuses throughout the Civil Division.
When the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs in February, several justices relied on a doctrine that has rapidly become central to the court’s power over federal agencies: the Major Questions Doctrine.
It holds that agencies must point to clear congressional authorization when they take actions of major political or economic significance, with courts ultimately deciding what counts as “major” and how clear Congress must be.
Bloomberg Law traces the origin and rise of the Major Questions Doctrine, from its roots in earlier debates over agency power to its formal emergence in a 2022 Supreme Court ruling, and examines the growing divide among the justices over how it should be applied.
Read More or Watch the Video Here
Columnist Corner
As plaintiff-side work draws more law school students’ interest, David Lat offers tips for aspiring plaintiffs’ lawyers in his latest Exclusive Jurisdiction column—one of which is to avoid the “conveyer belt to Big Law” set up by many law schools, according to Bill Reid of Reid Collins & Tsai.
Seeking out opportunities to argue in a courtroom, and taking initiative to reach out to practitioners about plaintiffs’ firms will help students learn more about the left side of the “v” and resist the momentum toward corporate defense, David says.
Commentary & Opinion
SEC Signals It’s Time to Fix a Cross-Border Bank Resolution Gap
Two recent developments by the Securities and Exchange Commission offer some long-overdue regulatory clarity to cross-border resolution practitioners, says Spencer West’s Ariadne Clinton.
Texas, Nevada Laws Can’t Be Measured Against Delaware Benchmark
Corporate law has for decades been taught and studied with Delaware as the default framework, and other jurisdictions treated largely as variations on that model. That framing is convenient, but it is also wrong. When Delaware is treated as the default, jurisdictional competition becomes a debate about perception rather than substance.
How DOJ’s Independence Came Undone
In President Trump’s second term, he has broken traditional norms of independence at the Justice Department by purging career staff, calling for the prosecution of his enemies, and challenging the judiciary.
In the season premiere of UnCommon Law, host Matthew Schwartz traces those norms from their origins through their greatest tests—and asks whether the system that held through Watergate, the Clinton impeachment, and even the first Trump term was ever as durable as it seemed.
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