Burford's strong commitment to the values and principles of corporate responsibility is inherent to our business, core to our culture and evident in our actions and priorities. As the leader of the legal finance industry, Burford has led the institutionalization of the industry and has adopted corporate responsibility and best practices, providing legal finance solutions that we believe:
- Reduce or eliminate growth-inhibiting legal expense;
- Enable injured or harmed entities to obtain redress and recover losses through litigation, arbitration or regulatory process, facilitating growth and deterring future malfeasance; and
- Enhance liquidity and facilitate growth for injured or harmed entities by monetizing meritorious claims, judgments and awards.
Broadly, we believe that our legal finance delivers two benefits.
First, our financing generally increases access to justice and reinforces and strengthens the rule of law, both fundamental social goods. The global economy and modern society need strong, clear and efficient legal systems in order to function. Our commercial legal finance generally supports these systems and improves them by creating a more level economic playing field in commercial disputes, allocating capital to meritorious commercial legal matters and facilitating access to justice for commercial litigants. As New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten rightly observed, “[L]itigation funding allows lawsuits to be decided on their merits, and not based on which party has deeper pockets.”
Second, our legal finance helps to increase the efficient allocation of scarce economic resources. When companies and law firms finance commercial litigation and arbitration with capital from Burford, they preserve their own capital to invest in their businesses where and when doing so will have the greatest benefit, whether that means hiring employees, spending on research and development or simply easing liquidity pressures that would otherwise harm the enterprise. This benefits our clients, their stakeholders and the broader economy.