Four Tall-Tales About Legal Funding
In recent years, legal funding has grown to become one of the fastest growing financial trends in the United States. With those within the US justice system, backing the practice, and industry leaders alone, taking on over 50,000 applications each month, legal funding has gone from a relatively unknown practice to becoming one of the most important avenues for helping clients as well as their attorneys obtain the justice as well as the financial help they need. According to the team at Apex Legal Funding, one of the top sources of legal funding Queens residents have to choose from, the past five years have been crucial to those championing legal funding as it has gained a strong foothold as a subsidiary service to many in the legal world. For instance, just as important as hiring a private investigator, or medical professional to testify as an expert witness – legal funding has been just as vital as it allows these individuals to get paid, as very few of them will work based on a contingency unless done as a personal favor to lawyers with whom they may have a relationship. Throughout their years of providing legal funding Queens experts at Apex Legal Funding have not only helped clients to fund their cases, but educated on them on the process as well. While the basic aspect of legal funding services lies in providing clients with money required to fund their lawsuits – paying lawyer fees, and other items like, paying for expert witnesses, paying for excess laboratory testing, private investigators, and more. In addition to the actual cost of the case, legal funding also helps to provide the plaintiff with the financial stability they may require, in the event they have either won the case or agreed upon a monetary settlement, and they are waiting for the actual settlement amount to be paid. for instance, in some cases, the plaintiff might want to receive the money in a lump sum, while the judge and the other party have agreed to a payment plan. This allows, for a small fee, that the plaintiff will receive all their money upfront, as they may have some pressing needs – and as the payments come in, the legal funding company will be paid off with interest. The thing is despite being straightforward, often, because legal funding companies help with so many different services, what they truly do can become mixed up and it can be difficult to tell fact from fiction – here are a few common misconceptions about the field below.
· There to exploit you!
Often, legal funding companies get a bad wrap and are accused of being “elitist money-men” taking advantage of “poor people who might have lucked into a lawsuit settlement” and taking percentage off their rightfully earned settlement. The fact is, that with legal funding Queens lenders at Apex Legal Funding have been able to help countless families during their most crucial time of need. In many cases, clients of Apex Legal Funding might have been in a situation as such that a single mother, head of household, who was in a middle class financial state, however due to her injuries she could no longer work and therefore was in need of financial assistance paying the bills as she recovers, and awaits her settlement, and going back to work.
· Legal Funding is Just a Loan
Its understandable why individuals would confuse legal funding with a conventional loan, as it might appear as such on the surface. The biggest difference however is that a loan must begin to be repaid relatively soon after it is taken, in addition, there are high interest fees and this will often lead to mounting, crippling debt that can take years to pay off. Often, before legal funding people used to turn to conventional bank loans and credit cards, leaving them in debt for years. However, with legal funding client submits an application to a funder and, if approved, the client receives a cash advance. After receiving the cash advance, there are no payments of any kind until the case settles, which could be months or years away.In a legal funding arrangement, repayment of an advance is only required if the client’s lawsuit is successful. If the suit is not successful — for any reason — everyone goes their separate ways and the client’s obligation to repay the cash advance simply disappears.
· Legal Funding Can Hamper the Legal Process
This could not be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to legal funding Queens experts at Apex Legal Funding are often able to introduce their clients to better lawyers, investigators, and for the most part they avoid this, and aside from if their opinions are asked for, they have absolutely no say, whatsoever in what happens during the case, and are completely separate from things.
· Legal Funding Has No Regulation – So Be Careful!
The fact of the matter is that since legal funding has grown quite a bit over the years, becoming an increasingly regulated industry, with practices designed to protect the plaintiff’s best interests. ALFA, the industry’s trade association, is leading the way in establishing the highest standards and a set of business practice principles for the legal funding industry. ALFA worked alongside former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to establish a set of best practices for legal funding companies operating in New York.
For more information on legal funding or to schedule an appointment for yourself, contact Apex Legal Funding today.
